Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History (20 page)

distaff
. In genealogy, the female or maternal side of the family.

distraint
.
See
distress.

distress
. A distraint. The remedy by which landlords sought to secure the payment of arrears by seizing the goods of a debtor, selling them and retaining what was owed. The procedure fell into disuse because of technicalities which had been introduced for the benefit of the tenant, the non-observance of which voided the whole proceeding and exposed the landlord to heavy damages. A proper demand for rent must be made, only the landlord or his agent could make the distress, entry to a premises could not be made by breaking a door and distresses were prohibited between sunset and sunrise and on Sundays. Certain goods were exempted from distress as were stranger's goods found on the premises. Under Deasy's Act (
Landlord and Tenant Law Land Act
, 1860) distress could not be made for arrears of rent due for more than a year. The net effect was that a legal proceeding by distress for the recovery of arrears of rent was almost always adopted.

district court
. The modern successor to the petty sessions.

district electoral division
. Formerly a poor law division, a district electoral division comprised a number of townlands grouped together for local electoral purposes.

doffer
. A textile worker who removed the full spindles or bobbins of wool or cotton from the carding cylinders to make room for empty ones.

dolmen
.
See
portal dolmen.

Dominican Friars
. The Dominican or Black Friars were mendicants who settled in Dublin and Drogheda in 1224. By 1300 they had about 24 friaries, rising to 38 by the time of the
dissolution
of the monasteries (1538–42). Founded in 1215 by St Dominic, the order was particularly dedicated to preaching and hence the abbreviation, OP, the Order of Preachers.

domicilium
. In Catholic baptismal registers, place of residence.

donjon
. The keep or great tower of a castle.

Doric
. The earliest and simplest of the three Greek orders of architecture, the Doric style is distinguished by fluted columns that lack bases and stand directly on platforms. The capital is a plain flat square beneath which is a convex moulding and below this again a number of small rings or channels.

dorse
. The back of a document, hence the term ‘endorse'.

double pile
. An eighteenth-century house style comprising an arrangement of six rooms in two ranges (piles), each range of three rooms built one behind the other. The ranges were separated by two middle rooms. The middle room to the front of the house, the entrance hall, opened onto rooms on either side. The main reception room lay to the rear of the entrance hall and it too opened onto a room at either side. The main elevation of a double pile house was three, five, or seven windows wide, arranged symmetrically. The style was introduced to Ireland by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce in 1731 with the construction of Cashel Palace in Co. Tipperary.

doublet
. A tight-fitting jacket worn between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.

doubling ordinances
. Royal ordinances issued in 1643 and 1647 which offered to double the amount of land due to any
adventurer
who contributed an additional quarter of his original subscription to fund the suppression of the Irish rebellion. The generosity of these terms was enhanced by the fact that the allotments were to be made in Irish rather than in English measure. After the Restoration in 1660, however, the doubling allowance was cancelled and adventurers received land equivalent to the actual value of their adventure. Subsequently they also had their land grants retrenched by a third.

dovecote
. A pigeonhouse or
columbarium
used to provide meat to the lord's table.

dower
. The right of a widow to a
life estate
in one-third of her husband's realty (real estate) where that estate was held in
fee simple
(freehold). It did not apply in cases where the property was a life estate, a joint tenancy or was leased.

dowry
. An endowment of property or money brought by the wife to her husband upon marriage.

Down Survey
(1654–56). A mapped record of land forfeited as a consequence of the 1641 rebellion, suggested and supervised by William Petty and so called because the forfeited estates were measured and plotted down on maps. The Down Survey lacks the detail provided by the
Civil Survey
inquisitions but provides a more precise measurement of estates. Barony, parish and townland are the divisions employed in the survey. Baronial entries commence with a description of soil quality and a listing of rivers. Then follows a list of the parishes in the barony and related observations. Detailed parish entries note boundaries, soil quality and the number of forfeited townlands contained therein. The most important parts of the survey – the schedules of forfeited lands – are contained in the
terriers
and accompanying numbered parish maps. Lands classified as ‘Protestant Lands' were not measured as these were not to be re-distributed. (NLI, MS 714; Larcom,
The history of the survey
; Ó Domhnaill, ‘The maps', pp. 381– 392.)

dragoons
. Heavy cavalry.

Drapier's Letters
. A series of seven letters penned anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1724–5 which attacked the English government proposal to mint copper halfpence for Ireland and rejected the legitimacy of the
Declaratory Act
, arguing that Ireland, as a kingdom no less than England, had the right to make laws for its own governance.
See
Wood's Halfpence. (Swift,
The Drapier's letters
.)

dripstone
. A stone or hood moulding protruding over a window or door, the function of which was to divert rainwater.

drisheen
. A sheep's blood pudding traditionally associated with Co. Cork.

drugget
. A coarse woollen fabric.

duanaire
. A Gaelic poem-book or anthology.

Dublin Bench
. The
justiciars' cour
t and sometimes known as the chief place or county court of Dublin, it was the principal royal court in Ireland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was presided over by the
justiciar
and from about 1400 was re-styled the
king's bench
.

Dublin Metropolitan Police
. The failure of the parish
watch
to deal with public disorder in the city led to the establishment in 1786 of a centralised, permanent and uniformed police force in Dublin. After several reformations this force metamorphosed into the Dublin Metropolitan Police in 1838. Modelled on the London Metropolitan Police, the DMP remained outside the control of the national Irish constabulary until its demise in 1925 when it was incorporated into the garda síochána. (de Blaghd, ‘The DMP', pp. 116–126.)

Dublin Philosophical Society
(1683–1708). Founded in Dublin by
William Molyneaux
on the model of the Royal Society in London and with a membership drawn largely from the graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, the Philosophical Society was the earliest of the learned societies to appear in Ireland. Though its existence was short-lived and punctuated by periods of inactivity, the society attracted many prominent figures including William Petty (first president), Narcissus Marsh, George Berkeley and William King. The society's transactions revolved to a great extent around the reading of scientific papers at meetings and experimentation of a practical nature. (Hoppen, ‘The papers', pp. 151–248;
Idem
, ‘The Dublin Philosophical Society', pp. 99–118.)

Dublin Society
.
See
Royal Dublin Society.

dues, small
. Small dues were fees paid to the local Anglican minister by all parishioners for christenings, churchings, marriages and funerals. Catholics and Protestant dissenters had to pay these fees even though no ceremony was ever performed. They also had to pay dues to their own ministers for the performance of the actual ceremony. Small dues were a vexation which, along with the rate at which
tithe
was fixed, featured amongst the complaints of agrarian combinations such as the
Oakboys
. They also led to the emergence of the
couple-beggar
who offered cut-price rates for marriages. In the mid-eighteenth century small dues amounted to 2
s
. 6
d
. for marriage, 1
s
. 6
d
. for christenings, 1
s
. for funerals and 4
d
. as a composition for offerings at church festivals.
See
burials.

dulse
. Dillisk, an edible seaweed.

dún
. (Ir.) A drystone defensive enclosure similar to a rath and dating to the Iron Age.

during good behaviour
.
See quamdiu se bene gesserint
.

during pleasure (
durante beneplacito nostro
)
.
See quamdiu se bene gesserint
.

Durrow, Book of
. A seventh-century ornamented copy of the four gospels which, according to the
Annals of Clonmacnoise
, had magical qualities. It contains 248 folios and is held in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. (
Evangeliorum
.)

‘Dutch Billy'
. A gable-fronted, urban dwelling influenced by Dutch building principles.

Eadem
. (L., same) A footnote convention used to repeat the name of the immediately preceding female author but a different work.
Eaedem
is used where the work is that of a number of female authors.
See Idem.

easement
. A right over a neighbour's land conferred on a landowner by virtue of his ownership, including right of way, light, support and water.

Easter
. A term in the legal and university year commencing shortly after Easter.
See
sittings.

Ecclesiastical Commissioners
.
See
Church Temporalities Act.

ecclesiastical courts
. Ecclesiastical courts dealt largely with marriage and testamentary matters, ecclesiastical administration, cases of clerical misconduct, defamation and suits for the payment of
tithe
. There were 26 in Ireland: the court of prerogative and faculties, 24 consistorial or diocesan courts and the ecclesiastical court of Newry and Mourne. The four metropolitan courts (the diocesan courts of the archbishops) also exercised appellate jurisdiction for the province. Appeals from the metropolitan courts were heard in the court of delegates. Ecclesiastical courts were conducted under the jurisdiction of the bishop but he was not permitted to preside over them. Instead responsibility for their conduct was delegated to a vicar-general, a clergyman or lay person with a secular degree of doctor of law.
See
consistorial court, court of delegates, court of prerogative and faculties.

Ecclesiastical Titles Act
(1851). A draconian piece of penal legislation (14 & 15 Vict., c 60) directed against the Catholic hierarchies of Britain and Ireland, triggered by the papal decision to restore a Catholic episcopacy in Britain and by the action of the Irish Catholic bishops at the
Synod of Thurles
in denouncing the
Queen's Colleges
and the treatment of tenants by landlords. Piqued at this demonstration of Catholic insolence, Lord John Russell, the Whig prime minister, proposed to end papal aggression by penalising the assumption of any territorial title in the United Kingdom by any Catholic archbishop, bishop or dean and by declaring all deeds and documents signed by them to be illegal. All bequests for the maintenance of such offices and charitable bequests devised in trust to a bishop by virtue of his office were to be voided and forfeited to the crown. The act, passed in July 1851 against the advice of the law officers, was ineffectual. No one was ever prosecuted and it was repealed in 1871 (34 & 35 Vict., c. 53). The idea of the Whigs introducing penal legislation and Russell's attacks on Irish Catholics in parliament proved damaging only to the party and himself. The Whigs lost influence in Rome and Ireland and within a year Russell was eclipsed by Palmerston. By including Ireland in the legislation he also succeeded in creating an independent Irish party in the house of commons.
See
Catholic Defence Association. (Kerr,
‘A nation of beggars'?
pp. 241– 81; Larkin,
The making of the Roman Catholic Church
, pp. 81–5, 92–5, 99–100.)

economy fund
. The corporate income of a cathedral. The fund derived largely from the rents on cathedral lands and renewal fines, the principal claim on which was the maintenance of the cathedral building.

Education, Commissioners of
. Established in 1806, the inquiry of the Commissioners of Education was a reconstitution of a 1791 Irish parliamentary commission of inquiry whose report was neither published nor presented in parliament.
See
Education, Report on. The commissioners produced 14 reports on contemporary educational provision in Ireland by the close of operations in 1812, the most significant of which – the fourteenth – provided the blueprint for the national system which emerged in 1831. Its key recommendations included the establishment of a permanent body of education commissioners to administer parliamentary grants to schools for the poorer classes and to control textbooks. Under the proposed system no attempt would be made to influence or alter the religious beliefs of the pupils and to this end the report distinguished between literary and moral education (which the commissioners regarded as the realm of the state) and religious education (which they acknowledged was the prerogative of clergy of the respective denominations). The commissioners' reports impacted little on contemporary provision for the state was already funding Protestant education societies such as the Incorporated Society (
charter-schools
) and the
Association for Discountenancing Vice
but they contributed significantly to the growing consensus about the shape of educational provision that would ultimately emerge. (
Fourteenth report from the commissioners of the Board of Education in Ireland
, HC 1812–13 (21) V. 221; Akenson,
The Irish education experiment
, pp. 76–80.)