User:Jnestorius/Liberty (medieval Ireland)

A liberty, in the medieval Lordship of Ireland, was a franchise or palatinate granted to one of the leading Anglo-Norman magnates, who exercised hereditary jurisdiction almost independent of the King of England (who was Lord of Ireland). The concept was similar to the Marcher Lords in Wales, but the Irish liberties were fewer and larger than the Welsh Marches. While officers of the Dublin Castle administration governed Ireland as a whole, many were preempted at local level within each liberty. Some liberties became "royal liberties" in which the king regained control but continued to appoint officials to the liberty's local administration rather than abolishing it altogether (compare the Duchy of Lancaster in England).

History
In the decades after the 1169 Norman invasion of Ireland, only the more accessible land near the south and east coast was shired into "royal counties" with a sheriff answerable to the Justiciar of Ireland in Dublin Castle. Remoter land was granted to a magnate ("lord" or "earl") who was rewarded for the greater effort of subduing the natives with a greater autonomy. Such grants specified vague territorial limits within which they were permitted to administer as much land as they could conquer. The first two such grants were Meath and Leinster; later came Ulster [? and Connacht ?].


 * I think looking at Lord of Connaught and John de Courcy that the first-generation of invaders were magnates totally independent of the English king, and only after John arrived could the situation be considered to have even the minimal regularity implied by the label "liberty". Though maybe the early vague grants were nevertheless the statutory basis for liberties; i.e. royal control increased gradually by custom and precedent (rather than suddenly by the grant of a new, more restrictive charter) so that they evolved into liberties from something else. Maybe the transition is marked by the change from "lord of X" to "Earl of X". John was Lord of Ireland in 1177; Henry II's visit was in 1171-2, so earlier Lords were maybe subject qua king of England, not via Lord of Ireland. Did the 1177 title invalidate the earlier Lords? Hand p11 says reserved pleas seems to date from 1208 regrant of Leinster

From Crooks 2005:
 * Liberty jurisdictions were not, however, precisely defined until 1205 in Ulster and 1208 in Leinster and Meath, when it was accepted that cross lands were reserved to the crown, royal justices had to be admitted to hear the four pleas, and actions could be taken on appeal to the the royal courts.

Veach 2010 shows that the heirs of de Lacy (Meath) and de Clare (Leinster) had to apply to the Lord/King for seisin (which suggests the grant was less than fully automatic) and also the jurisdictional dispute between Lord John and King Richard, as to whether their father Henry's grant of Ireland to John permanent, or whether Ireland reverted to Richard on Henry's death. "The security of Walter [de Lacy]’s position in Meath was clearly based upon King Richard’s indomitable will, for once Richard left on crusade his brother John was quick to assert his authority." (p.184) Both Richard (1194; p.185) and John (1195; p.187) issued charters to Walter for Meath. "It may not be a coincidence that shortly after Walter’s reconciliation with Richard, in December 1198, John once again displayed his support for the de Lacys in Ireland, and finally admitted the legitimacy of the tenure of Meath that Walter had obtained from King Richard in 1189 by issuing a confirmation charter for the lands Walter granted to his brother Hugh before 1191." (p.189) Hugh de Lacy lordship of Ulster 5 May 1205; earl of Ulster 29 May. (p.196)

Not sure of the status of Limerick: 12 January 1201 William de Braose was granted the honour of Limerick, except the city, churchlands, and William de Burgh's lands (Veach 2010, p.192). William de Burgh had been gifted the city in 1194 by the sons of Domnall Mór Ua Briain (p.185). On 8 July 1203 the city was taken from de Burgh by the justiciar and granted to de Braose during pleasure (pp.193-4). By end of 1205, de Burgh was dead and in 1206 Walter de Lacy held lordship of Limerick (p.196) -- he was de Braose's "custodian" (p.194) and also had been granted lands in Limerick and Breifne by John in 1197 (p.189). "To aid in the effective exploitation of their far-flung holdings, de Braose and Walter de Lacy took up position in separate realms, and each acted as custodian for the other’s lands there" (p.193). In 1206 Meiler fitz Henry took Limerick city by force; de Lacy tried to take it back in 1207 but John had meantime authorised Meiler to keep it (pp.196-7). On 24 April 1208, de Braose settled a dispute with King John for "massive debt to the Crown owed from his purchase of the honour of Limerick in 1201" and Walter de Lacy received a new charter for Meath (p.199) -- no mention of Limerick. "although he claimed to be in pursuit of de Braose as a debtor to the Crown, the king all but ignored him when William crossed the Irish Sea to treat for peace, leaving him behind in Wales as he sailed against his true quarries, the de Lacys. When John landed with the royal army at Crook on 20 June 1210,155 he ignored Limerick (the supposed casus belli) and instead marched north through Leinster towards Meath and Ulster." (p.201)

Liberties were inherited by the eldest son, but if no sons survived they might be divided between daughters. Rebel lords might forfeit their liberty, in which case it might be administered by the sheriff of County Dublin, erected into a county in its own right, or regranted as a liberty to someone else (or the same person, rehabilitated).

Through the thirteenth century, as the Norman colony prospered and expanded, the area of the liberties shrank as that of shired land grew. However, after the Bruce invasion in the 1310s, some of the devastated areas were regranted as liberties in a mostly vain attempt to shore up the beleaguered lands outside the English Pale. During the Tudor reconquest of the 16th century, most of Ireland was partitioned into royal counties of a more centralised Kingdom of Ireland. The only remaining liberty was the Earls of Ormond's in County Tipperary, which was extinguished as part of the Second Duke's attainder for supporting the Jacobite rising of 1715.

A 1428 ordinance by Ormond as LL applied to KK, TY, and XTY, to forestall cadet branches asserting independence.
 * Kilkenny was in theory an ordinary county subject to the Dublin administration; Tipperary was an Ormond liberty, but during the fifteenth century the earl seems to have claimed liberty rights in Kilkenny as well.Statutes issued by the ;White Earl' in 1434 declared that the counties of Kilkenny and Tipperary 'should be one country under one rule or under one lordship' and provided for the government of Tipperary, Kilkenny and their crosses as a single unit. Kilkenny was effectively resumed into the hands of the crown after 1534.
 * The creation of a liberty in County Kildare about 1500 detached that county from the normal processes of civil jurisdiction and put them instead in the hands of Kildare's own officials.

The Articuli Cleri of 6 May 1291 included nos 6 and 7 relating to interference of liberty officials in crosslands; clergy appeal to king's self-interest against the barons.

Crooks:
 * Moreover, despite ministerial complaint about the loss to the exchequer caused by the alienation of regalities, there was no general attack on liberty jurisdiction in the period [1356–1496]. Richard II, for one, indulged in ‘a new wave of liberty creation’, granting the ill-fated earl of Oxford, Robert de Vere, palatine jurisdiction over the whole of Ireland in 1385–6, and engaged in another round during his Irish expedition of 1394–5. Admittedly, these short-lived creations were for Richard’s favourites; but the resident nobility was also bolstered. Successive earls of Ormond had their authority nurtured by the king. In 1372 Edward III confirmed the liberty of Tipperary to the heirs of the second earl of Ormond, and in 1392 the government facilitated the Butlers’ purchase of the Despenser purparty of Kilkenny.

Crooks 2017 [lots here]:
 * Richard II, whose expedition to Ireland of 1394–5 was the occasion for the creation of a new title—earl of Cork created for Edward earl of Rutland (d. 1415), son of the duke of York, and later duke of Aumale.2 Rutland appears to have received his title before 5 January 1395, when he is styled in a charter witness list as ‘earl of Rutland and Cork’.3 Following the pattern established in the early fourteenth century the entire county of Cork was granted to him to hold ‘with the franchises of a county palatine’. By the first year of Henry IV, however, letters appointing a sheriff (rather than a seneschal) for Co. Cork indicate that the liberty had been suppressed
 * Gilbert, fifth Lord Talbot (d.1418). Gilbert claimed the liberty of Wexford by descent from John Hastings, earl of Pembroke, who had died without heirs in 1389.4 The Talbot title to Wexford was contested by Reginald, third Lord Grey of Ruthin (d.1440).5 Much to the outrage of Lord Grey, Sir John Talbot used his tenure as lieutenant of Ireland from 1414 to assert his family’s rights and, after the death of Gilbert Talbot in 1418, the lieutenant seized Wexford into the king’s hands
 * In 1521 George Talbot appointed an English seneschal to manage his affairs in the liberty of Wexford
 * In the case of Ireland’s oldest earldom, Ulster—created in 1205 for Hugh II de Lacy (d. 1243) and revived in 1263 by the Lord Edward for Walter de Burgh (d. 1271)—the distinction between ‘resident’ and ‘absentee’ earls is still more artificial
 * a writ issuing from the chancery of the liberty of Trim in Ireland in the name of Edmund Mortimer (d. 1425) styles him ‘earl of March and Ulster, lord of Wigmore, Clare, Trim and Connacht’.2 After 1425, Ulster passed to Richard duke of York (d. 1460), who visited Ireland twice and provided a focus of loyalty for the otherwise fractious Irish earls.3 In 1449, when the future duke of Clarence, George (executed in 1470), son of Richard of York, was born at Dublin and the ‘earls of Ormond and Desmond stood sponsors at the font’.4 The earldom passed to the crown in 1461, and although at this point aspirations to exercise lordship directly disappeared, and accommodation was made with native lords,
 * Ralph Stafford—created earl of Stafford the following year—agreed a marriage contract by which his daughter Beatrice would marry the future second earl of Desmond, bringing with her a marriage portion of £1000 and a jointure of £200, as well as the demise of his purparty of the liberty of Kilkenny for a term of ten years.
 * The descent of the liberty of Wexford from the Hastings earls of Pembroke is highly involved and discussed in R. Ian Jack, ‘Entail and descent: the Hastings inheritance, 1370 to 1436’, BIHR 38 (1965), pp. 1–19.
 * As David Crouch discusses above, the franchises enjoyed by the fourteenth-century Irish earls were more prosaic, being penetrated by the royal government from outwith because of the reserved crown pleas and hollowed out from within by the erection inside the boundaries of the liberty of the ‘county of the crosses’ to which the royal government appointed its own sheriffs. Indeed, royal ministers moved with celerity to resume some of the newfangled liberties created for the Irish earls, and return them to the status of royal shires: Louth in 1329 and Kildare in 1345. Elsewhere, despite occasional ministerial complaints, the trend was towards perpetuation and extension of franchises, rather than restriction and suppression. In the 1290s, Geoffrey Geneville (d. 1314) had been in a unique position among the English lords in Ireland in that he was empowered to hear the four pleas of the crown within his liberty of Trim. When Edmund Mortimer (d. 1425) came of age in 1415, he had a series of charters extending back as far the original grant of Meath in 1172 to Hugh Lacy I (d. 1186) inspected and registered in the Irish chancery. The king then confirmed that Trim was to be held by Edmund with all the liberties exercised by his ancestors, including the four pleas.2 Likewise the earls of Desmond, whose grant of Co. Kerry as a liberty in 1329 included the standard reservations,3 seem later to have legitimately claimed cognizance of the four pleas: the inquisition post mortem of John fourth earl of Desmond (d. 1399), taken in December 1420 at Tralee, claims that the earl had ‘a liberty and regal jurisdiction [L. libertatem et regale iurisdicionem] within the same county [Kerry] in chief, viz. to have cognizance and jurisdiction of all pleas both royal and personal before his seneschal and justices’.4 Less is known about the liberty of Wexford, but as late as the early sixteenth century, George Talbot fourth earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford, was jealously protective of his franchise, as emerges from the defensive tone of a letter written by Gerald ninth earl of Kildare in 1519, who denied having infringed Talbot’s liberty
 * The ordinances issued at Fethard, probably in 1428, assert that that the community of Kilkenny and Tipperary ‘shall be one patria under one rule or one lordship’—an assertion of authority not only over the liberty of Tipperary but also Co. Kilkenny and the crosslands, to which the crown had customarily appointed royal sheriffs.


 * 3:
 * Liberty jurisdictions were not, however, precisely defmed until 1205 in Ulster and 1208 in Leinster and Meath, when it was accepted that cross lands were reserved t~ the crown, royal justices had to be admitted to hear the four pleas, and actions could be talcen on appeal to the royal courts. Before this, the lords of these liberties-although they owed knight service-rnay have had much greater freedom of action (see H. S. Sweetrnan (ed), Calendar of documents relating to Ireland, 1171-1307 [hereafter CDI] (5 vols, London 1875-86), i §§263, 381-82; Normans, ii 233-34; cf. Otway-Ruthven, Ireland, 182-87; eadem, 'Knight service in Ireland', 1-3). Moreover, while the thirteenth century witnessed greater articulation of royal power, it was also the 'age of defìnition' of liberties in the W elsh March, in response to the assertiveness of Henry III in particular (see Davi es, 'Kings, lords and liberties in the March of W ales', 53-59; idem, Age of conquest, 287-88). Counter-factual speculation is dangerous, but without the concessions to royal power in 1205-08, the lords in Ireland rnight have tried to articulate and defend much greater jurisdictional immunity.

The Trim liberty was suppressed in 1461; the Meath liberty was abolished [some time after 1460] and briefly revived three times: in 1472, 1463-4, and 1478-9.

Malcolm 2007 p.92-93 on administration of Carlow 1270-1306.

A cause of Ormond-Desmond feuding was control of lands owned by Desmond within Ormond liberty.

MacCotter 2005:
 * The usage of the cantred in the area of local administration involved variables, chiefly the difference between the royal counties and the liberties or private franchises. The latter were lordships where most royal jurisdictional powers were delegated to their lords at the time of their original grant. In the course of the thirteenth century a process of enshirement led to the creation of various counties whose jurisdictional prerogatives were retained by the crown. The shire model used in these cases was also partly, or largely, adopted in most of the liberties. Over time the status of several of these units alternated between that of shire and liberty, now one, now the other. The permanent royal counties were Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Connacht, and Roscommon. Tipperary and Kerry remained as royal counties until erected into liberties around 1330. Louth, normally a royal county, became a liberty between 1319 and 1330. The liberty of Kildare had the status of a royal county between 1297 and 1317 and permanently after 1345. The liberty of Carlow changed to a royal county between 1306 and 1313. Following division between heiresses, one moiety of the original liberty of Meath was erected into the county of Meath in 1297 while the other remained a liberty (Trim). The remaining liberties, Kilkenny, Wexford and Ulster, were never royal counties.7

Quinn (1939) summary 1485-1534:
 * Palatine liberties and honours which were being administered as such during the period under review comprise: those of Tipperary and Ormond in county Tipperary, under the earls of Ormond; those of Kerry (north Kerry), Any (county Limerick) and Dungarvan (county Waterford), under the earls of Desmond; Wexford under the earls of Shrewsbury; and, for the latter part of the period, Kildare under the earls of Kildare. Three great liberties had fallen to the crown in 1460 (death of Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York) as the Mortimer inheritance-Ulster, Connacht and Meath. Two of these will be referred to later. Meath was administered as a royal liberty during 1467-80, after which the separate administration was terminated. Kilkenny could, as has been noted, be reckoned as a palatine liberty at the end of the fourteenth century. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Butlers exercised certain regalities there, but there is no evidence in the Ormond Deeds of the existence of a formal liberty-administration and some evidence there and elsewhere that it was not so regarded. Nevertheless it has been included with the county Tipperary liberties as inside the Butler principality. Similarly the formal position of the Geraldine earls of Desmond in county Cork is obscure. They held extensive lands there and the county has been included in the territory under their control. No effective liberties were exercised in Connacht or Ulster during this period
 * legally, Ulster was a royal liberty...In Ulster the liberty had gone out of existence because there had been no resident lord to hold it together: in Connacht the lordship of the de Burgh had been continuous, but the fabric of administration which had characterised it as a feudal liberty had almost disappeared. ...The lords of Clanrickard became the hereditary representative of the crown in Connacht, and no attempt was made until Elizabethan times to prove that they were usurpers. They seem to have maintained fairly regularly a sheriff for the liberty.

1381–2: Roger Mortimer (born 1374), Earl of Ulster, was Chief Governor of Ireland:
 * During the minority of the Earl Roger, the colonial documents connected with Eastern Ulster, were issued under a special seal, presenting on one side the royal arms, and on the other the figure of Richard II., seated on the throne, with a sceptre in his right hand, and bearing the circumscription, " Sigillum Ricardi, Regis Angliae et Franciae et Domini Hiberniae et Custodis Libertatis Ultoniae." A similar seal, with the name of Meath, instead of that of Ulster, was used for instruments concerning the Earl's liberty in the former county.

Richard II made Robert de Vere, Duke of Ireland palatine 1385; and other short-lived in 1394-5 expedition.

Ellis 1980 p.502:
 * in the question of the liberty jurisdiction of the two earls in Cos. Kildare and Tipperary, they were not to be treated alike. There are strong indications that under Wolsey in 1527-8 an unsuccessful attempt had been made to curtail or suppress both liberties. In Kildare's case, this attack was pressed again [by Cromwell] in the spring of 1534 on the grounds that the liberty had no warrant in law, and probably also that it was being abused. This second charge, which was levelled by spokesmen for the Butlers and probably pressed during Kildare's examination in council between about March and May 1534, was very probably true, though the same accusation was made against Ossory, at least in 1537. But it seems fairly clear that the liberty of Kildare had been formally restored to the earl about 1515, though not as a palatine liberty. Thus the decision to suppress 'the pretended lybertie of Kyldare', albeit in line with the policy to be developed by Cromwell in England, was politically unwise. If it were seriously intended to reform Kildare rather than to break him, the suppression of his liberty had to be accompanied by a similar move against the liberty of Tipperary

The Jurisdiction in Liberties Act 1535 for England has its Irish analogue in the Act of Absentees 1537, where absentee liberty lords whose lands were used in Silken Thomas' 1534 rebellion had their lands taken back. Nugent says Carlow in particular was still a liberty till then, latterly of the Howards Duke of Norfolk.

MacCotter 2000:
 * Under this new system, these church lands were settled by the Anglo-Norman barons and their men, but owing homage, service and rent to the see, while a significant portion of the ecclesiastical lands were retained directly by the diocesan authorities as demesne land. Thus the bishops became great landlords in right of their church, enjoying a similar status to the barons who held directly under the king, although technically the bishops held under a different tenure, that of frankalmoign (‘free alms’), subject only to the feudal incident of wardship, i.e. possession by the crown of the see-lands during periods of episcopal vacancy. As chief lords of their fees the bishops additionally enjoyed the feudal incidents of wardship and escheat, the latter in the case of the death without heirs of the tenant and in that of the tenant’s conviction on a serious felony charge. The status of the church as essentially tenant-in-chief under the crown, and thus on a par with the barons, required the establishment of distinct local government administrations in those cases where the crown devolved its powers on its barons by means of palatine creations, or liberties. Thus the creation of the liberties of Tipperary and of Kerry in the early fourteenth century resulted in two local administrations, each with its distinct sheriff, courts, coroners, etc., in both counties; in Kerry the County of Kerry and the County of the Cross of Kerry. The latter continued as a distinct administration at least into the 1420s.
 * The pattern of land distribution inherited by the Anglo-Norman dioceses was not regular: large areas of property lay together, often with pre-invasion monasteries or important churches at their centre, with smaller, sometimes single-denomination plots distributed at greater distances from the major monastic or church sites. The ecclesiastical sites at the centre of these larger blocks usually became the location for the new episcopal manors. By around 1600 we find that, apart from the chief or cathedral manor, significant erosion of property has occurred: the lesser manors retained only what been their demesne lands, and a few chief rents from some of the lands which had earlier been held by the manorial free tenants. It is usual to find that the church has lost possession of many of the isolated parcels held earlier
 * The pattern of land distribution inherited by the Anglo-Norman dioceses was not regular: large areas of property lay together, often with pre-invasion monasteries or important churches at their centre, with smaller, sometimes single-denomination plots distributed at greater distances from the major monastic or church sites. The ecclesiastical sites at the centre of these larger blocks usually became the location for the new episcopal manors. By around 1600 we find that, apart from the chief or cathedral manor, significant erosion of property has occurred: the lesser manors retained only what been their demesne lands, and a few chief rents from some of the lands which had earlier been held by the manorial free tenants. It is usual to find that the church has lost possession of many of the isolated parcels held earlier

Frame 1993:
 * In 1215 there were only three royal sheriffs in Ireland, operating from the king's towns of Dublin, Waterford with Cork, and Limerick; most of country lay within great baronial liberties or the remains of Irish kingdoms. By 1300oo the network of shires had expanded and become much more closely textured. There were eleven sheriffs, nine of them in the provinces of Leinster, Meath and Munster. Except for Ulster, which was awkward of access, the liberties were on a smaller scale and more firmly pinned within the embrace of royal government. [p.90]

1570 parliament "marked the de facto end of the medieval earldom of Ulster".

Government
Just as the Lord of Ireland appointed a justiciar to administer in his absence, so the Lord or Earl of a liberty, who was rarely resident there, appointed a seneschal. The seneschal appointed a sheriff to administer justice; most liberties had just one sheriff, thereby constituting a single county. However the liberties Leinster and Ulster were subdivided into multiple counties. The seneschal appointed a sheriff. In most liberties, there were four "crown plea"s reserved to the king rather than the local magnate; these were rape, arson, treasure trove, and forestall. The exception was the liberty of Trim, where even these were granted. Local litigants could in any case petition the crown for a writ of error.
 * irelandbyways suggests the reserved pleas date from John's regrants post 1197, not the original 1170s grants.

Indeed:
 * We have seen that the Lordship of Leinster was conferred upon Strongbow; his daughter and heiress, Isabella, married William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke. This Earl sought a confirmatory grant of the Lordship of Leinster from King John. At this time, however, the King sought to limit the wide power enjoyed by the Irish Barons, and reserved to him self by the confirmatory grant certain pleas of the Crown, Appeals to the King's Court, marriages of heirs and appointments to Bishoprics and Abbeys.

Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia:
 * There were also private sheriffs within the greater liberties who were immediately answerable to the lords of these liberties and their stewards (or seneschals). The large liberty of Leinster had been divided into four separate administrative units from the late twelfth century on. A separate sheriff of County Kildare is first mentioned in 1224, before the partition of the liberty itself between coheirs. References to the other counties seem to come only after the division (to Co. Wexford in 1249; to County Carlow in 1254; to County Kilkenny in 1255), but the division itself probably followed the preexisting division into separate counties. The liberty of Ulster was also divided into a number of separate counties. ... sheriffs of the cross-lands also came to play a rule in acting in the counties within the liberties when the steward of the liberty failed to do so.

Did the liberty automatically pass with the Earldom? Was it always and Earldom? Was John de Courcy (a) made Earl of Ulster in 1181 (Cockayne's peerage says not) (b) granted the liberty of Ulster at any stage (1203 grant to de Lacy implies de facto control but not necessarily de jure control)?

Many towns in Ireland had municipal charters granted by the lord of the liberty rather than by the King of England; these were often but not always restated or replaced by later royal charters. Examples include Carlow and Kilkenny, whose first charters were from William Marshal, lord of Leinster. Did any municipal corporations at the Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act 1840 operate in part under charters granted by a palatine lord rather than a monarch? Although in Meath at least sublords also incorporated boroughs in their fiefs:
 * The set of powers which was delegated to De Lacy by Henry II was one of the most extensive in Ireland and presumably included the right to create boroughs although this is not specifically mentioned in the charter; ... in fact as Otway Ruthven notes, even relatively minor landlords created boroughs.

There is no surviving evidence of commission of the peace appointed by the lord; conversely, the royal commission of the peace extended to a liberty in times of forfeit and minority, and even at at other times in the fourteenth century.

Tipperary:
 * the earl appointed his own officers to oversee the administration of the county in lieu of the former royal officials whom they superseded : a seneschal of the liberty, chancellor, treasurer, sheriff, and various minor officials. In general, he based his administration on the pattern of the older Irish liberties but it may be noted that in the case of Tipperary, the specific functions of the liberty and seigneurial administrations were more clearly defined due to the fact that a seigneurial administration (headed by the seneschal of the earl's lands) was already in existence before the liberty came into being. Thus the earl had two seneschals heading separate administrations unlike the older liberties where one seneschal discharged both functions.

By contrast, Hand (p.116) says a seneschal and a steward in all liberties.

One of the Statutes of Kilkenny was to allow a sheriff or seneschal in hot pursuit of a criminal to enter the jurisdiction of another sheriff or seneschal.

Sir William Drury as Lord President of Munster succeeded in holding sessions in Clonmel (Tipperary) in 1576 and incurred the wrath of the Earl of Desmond in 1577 by trying to hold sessions in Tralee (Kerry). In September 1578 he held sessions in Kilkenny (Ormond but not officially a palatinate).

Herbert Wood:
 * Sir John Davies, in his Reports of Cases and Matters in Law, maintains that this liberty, as well as the other regal liberties of Ulster, Wexford, etc., were palatinates. As far as Wexford is concerned, Edward III granted to Laurence Hastings, earl of Pembroke and lord of Wexford, "praerogativam & honorem comitis Palatini in terris quas tenet de here ditate dicti Adomari," while in a quo warranto of 1621 for the liberty of Tipperary we find the words, "and further to do and execute within the aforesaid county all other things whatsoever which appertain to any earl of any County Palatine to be done or executed,"but the Act of 1715 by which the liberty was abolished was more cautious, as it described the franchise as "the Regalities and Liberties of the County of Tipperary and Cross Tipperary, commonly called the County Palatine of Tipperary." I have not, however, found any reference to the liberty of Trim as a palatinate, though the grant of Henry II to Hugh de Lacy seems to be sufficiently comprehensive to justify it in being so regarded. But the qualifications subsequently introduced, such as appeal to the sovereign and escheats to the Crown, tended to render even the full franchise of a liberty of lesser dignity than that of a palatinate.

Palatine barons
Some sources say Lords also granted peerages to vassals:
 * Those titular BARONS, to be found in England and Ireland, owed their dignity to the counts palatine, who had the power of conferring such honours in their several palatines, under the royal seignory, which the enjoyed by grants from the crown. In England were the Barons of Halton, Malpas, and Kinderton, created by Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester. The Barons of Walton, in Lancashire, and of Hilton, in Durham. In Ireland, the Barons of Skreene, Navan, and Galtrim, of the county of Meath. The Barons of Narvo and Rabane, of Kildare; the Barons of Neville, of Wexford; the Barons of Savage and Musset [sic Bligh; Misset in Davies; recte Bisset ], of Ulster; the Barons of Loughmoe, of Tipperary, and the Barons or BURNCHURCH, of Kilkenny. See Davis's Reports, page 65; Tighe’s Stat. Surv. of the County of Kilkenny, p. 637, and the family of Barry in this volume.

"J.W.H.", 1853:
 * The Palatines' power of creating Barons does not appear to have been profusely exercised. Davies only mentions eleven as being in Ireland, though this was far short of the number; of whom two alone, the Baron Misset (correctly, Bisset), and the Baron Savage, were in Ulster; but, although there is no authentic list of the Ulster Barons extant, there were unquestionably many more.

A 1793 law book citing Davis 1609:
 * No tenure created by a subject, though it be a tenure in gross of his person, can by any possibility grow of aspire to be a tenure in capite of the king. And therefore if the prince or other subject create such tenure of his person, and after is made king, this does not become tenure in chief.
 * the prince shall not have the prerogative of capite tenure during the life of the king.

These titles were not part of the Peerage of Ireland and did not confer a seat in the Irish House of Lords; some "palatine barons" sat in the Irish House of Commons, such as Rowland Fitzgerald, 2nd Baron of Burnchurch (a peerage in the liberty of Kilkenny), who was MP for County Kilkenny in 1532. Baron Slane was originally a palatine baron of Meath created for Richard le Fleming by  Hugh de Lacy; a descendant, Simon Fleming, 7th palatine baron Slane, sat in the Irish House of Lords, implying a barony by writ in the Irish peerage; the 7th palatine baron is thus considered the first holder of the peerage of Baron of Slane.

However, William Lynch in 1830 denies that these feudal barons were palatine barons, and denies that Irish liberties were palatinates in the manner of the Palatinate of Chester.

Baronial families in Meath continued in late 15C to hold the estates (or ‘baronies’) which they received from Hugh de Lacy in the twelfth century. "All baronial families occupied various local offices to some extent in the fourteenth century and appeared, if a little more occasionally, on the surviving writs of parliamentary summons. However, even though the Husseys of Galtrim and the Nangles of Navan maintained their influence in local government, only the Flemings and Nugents were included in the peerage and benefited from aristocratic patronage leading to high office in central government in the fifteenth century."

Subdivisions
Some lords divided their liberties into subunits variously called bailiwicks or counties. This may cause confusion, since liberties were also called "counties" (a "county palatine" or "the county of the liberty", as opposed to a "royal county" directly subject to the king as Lord). Liberties, or counties within liberties, might be divided into cantreds in the same way as royal counties; however, these did not always have the same range of functions as in royal counties.

Ulster
The liberty of Ulster was subdivided into bailiwicks, later called counties. From north to south these were:

Hand p.116 says only 5 shires.

Sometimes Ulster as a whole sent MPs to the Parliament; sometimes its constituent counties did. Writs of election were served in 1559 for counties Ards, Down, and Antrim, and the town of Carrickfergus; although none returned MPs. Potter says "The liberty of Ulster reverted to the Crown in 1461 and was extinguished around 1482." Katharine Simms says "In the case of Ulster, this independence [from Dublin Castle of lands beyond the Pale] was institutionalized by Tiptoft's parliament at Drogheda [1467], which ruled that notwithstanding the fact that the earldom of Ulster was now vested in the Crown, it should continue to be administered as a separate liberty, rather than a royal shire", citing Irish Record Office Series of Early Statutes (vol.3 1914 p.576 —presumably [http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/isbc/pui1467.html 1467–68 (7 & 8 Edw. 4) c. 51]— and see also vol.4 1939 pp.50–52). These counties, and the liberty itself, were largely defunct by 1570, when their territory were made into the royal shires of Antrim and Down. However, the county of the town of Carrickfergus justified the maintenance of its separate status as a corporate county as being the continuation of the (larger) medieval county of Carrickfergus. It was finally merged into County Antrim by the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898.

Leinster
The liberty of Leinster was divided into four counties: Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford, and Kildare. When the liberty was divided into five portions for William Marshal's five daughters, four of these portions became liberties with the same names as the four former counties, all of which subsequently became royal counties. (See the table below for details of these four liberties.) The fifth portion, that of Eva Marshal, was never erected into a liberty. It comprised lands in previously in the west of the Leinster liberty's county Kildare, and now in the east of County Laois. The lands were inherited by Eva's daughter Maud de Braose, whose husband Roger Mortimer never occupied them.

The church
The established church was exempt from much of the secular law made by the king.

Crosslands
The crosslands or croceæ were the lands within a county or liberty owned by the church, whether the diocese or a religious order. Crosslands were not included in the granting to a lord of a secular liberty,
 * irelandbyways says the precedent for this was:
 * in 1197 Prince John as Lord of Ireland had seized the temporalities of the See of Leighlin, thereby asserting non-spiritual sovereignty over church lands within the Liberties.
 * but
 * this description of the events and this both blame Hamo de Valoniis, Justiciar of Ireland.
 * Was Leinster was in John's hands then anyway? Or was it just that, since he was in Ireland, he did what he pleased?

"Margaret Murphy provides a careful reassessment of the episcopates of the first two Anglo-Norman archbishops of Dublin, correctly—in my view—identifying the motives behind the foundation of the collegiate church of St Patrick. Equally correctly she highlights the row between John, lord of Ireland, and Archbishop Cumin over de Valognes’s seizure of the temporalities of the see of Leighlin, though she misses its real significance—the assertion of the royal right over church lands situated within the liberty of Leinster."

At first the crosslands was administered by the sheriff of County Dublin, [Hand p12 says "juridically part of a convenient royal county"] but later each liberty's crosslands formed a county of itself, with their own sheriff and grand jury. Thus for example County Tipperary was divided into the County of the Liberty of Tipperary, with a seneschal appointed by the Earl of Ormonde, and the County of the Cross of Tipperary, comprising enclaves of church land scattered throughout the liberty. Each county of the cross was subject to the same jurisdiction and taxation as a shire or royal county, and was entitled to its own representation as a county constituency in the Parliament of Ireland. Richard Bagwell says 1374 Parl writs to liberties and crosses of Meath (first Parl) and Ulster, Wexford, Tipperary and Kerry (second Parl). Original quoted by Robert Montgomery Martin. Only the crosslands at the time of the grant were excluded from the liberty; land subsequently donated for religious purposes remained within it, although this caused legal disputes.

Art Cosgrove says crosslands specifically excluded (citing Otway-Ruthven). Yes, Otway-Ruthven says so.

Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia:
 * In the fourteenth century there also emerged within each of the liberties counties consisting of lands belonging to the church (cross-lands) in the liberty that were exempt for this reason from the control of the lord of the liberty and directly subject to the king’s rule. These sheriffs of the cross-lands also came to play a rule in acting in the counties within the liberties when the steward of the liberty failed to do so.

The 1297 act that made Loxeudy a county also trasnferred the crosslands of both Loxeudy and Trim into the new county Meath; and Trim was sometimes called the "liberty of Meath" as distinct from this separate "county of Meath". Thus  writ of election  includes "Vic Mid" and "Sen libtatis Mid" [not "Sen libtatis Trim"] and no "Vic Croc idm".

Religious liberties
The Manor of St. Sepulchre was a personal jurisdiction equivalent to a secular liberty, but with the Archbishop of Dublin for the time being as its lord. Its privileges were not finally extinguished until 1854.

William Betham, 1851:
 * These extensive liberties and free customs were equal to those of a palatine county or honour, and constituted the Archbishop's lordships, manors, and crosses into a feudal dignity or principality, similar to a county palatine. They are indeed nearly identical to those granted to the Earl of Ulster. The only grant of more extensive liberties was made to Hugh  de Lacy, of the lordship of Meath, in which the king reserved  only homage and fealty.

Hand p.132 mentions, and alludes to "important claims to liberties on the part of other prelates". Omany in Connacht was not a liberty but was granted by king Edward to Richard de la Rochelle with certain rights.

List and timeline

 * Footnotes: