Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History (35 page)

Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe
. A five-part seventeenth century compilation of poetry, genealogy, rights and annals concerning the O'Neills of Tyrone. It comprises
An Leabhar Eoghanach
(lore of the Tyrone O'Neills),
Ceart Uí Néill
(the rights and renders due the O'Neills),
Geinéalach na gCollach
(genealogy and lore of the McDonnells of Antrim),
Duanaire Cloinne Aodha Buidhe
(the poem book of the O'Neills of Clandeboye) and the annals of the Clandeboye O'Neills. (Ó Donnchadha,
Leabhar Cloinne
.)

Leabhar na gCeart
. (Ir., the Book of Rights)
A
n eleventh-century compilation of tributes owed to the seven provincial overlords (Munster, Connacht, Ailech, Airgialla, Ulster, Meath and Leinster) by their tributary vassals. Beginning with the king of Cashel, the tributes of each king are recorded in verse. (Dillon,
Lebor,
p.xlvi.)

Leabhar na hUidhre
. (Ir., Book of the Dun Cow) The oldest extant manuscript written entirely in Irish. Comprising 138 folio pages of vellum, it was compiled c. 1100 ad by Maelmuiré Ceilechair (d. 1106 ad) and appears to be closely associated with St Ciaran and Clonmacnoise. The contents are a mixed bag of historical romances and poems from the pre-Christian and Christian eras. It opens with a fragment of Genesis followed by an elegy on the death of St Colmcille, stories from the
Ulster Cycle
, the wanderings of Máel Dún's ship in the Atlantic, imperfect copies of
Táin Bó Cuailnge
and the destruction of Bruighean Da Dearga, a history of the great pagan cemeteries of Ireland, poems by Flann of Monasterboice and tales of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
Leabhar na hUidhre
is held in the library of the
Royal Irish Academy
. (O'Curry,
Lectures
, pp. 182–6.)

leas, leyes, lays
. Land rested from tillage by being set out to meadow or pasture.

lease
. A grant of property for a fixed period (either for years or the lives of named individuals) in return for rent and conditions or services which are noted in the lease.

lease for lives
. A lease perfected for the lifetime of three named persons. It was in the tenant's interest to select names judiciously in order to maximise the duration of the lease. Hence, the names often include those of the sovereign or young children.

lease for three lives renewable forever
. A lease which permitted, upon payment of a fine, the insertion of a new name whenever any of the three named persons dropped (died). Effectively it created a perpetuity and approximated the status of
fee simple
or
freehold
. The
Devon Commission
, which estimated that one-seventh of tenanted land in Ireland was held under such leases, heard that the lease for three lives renewable forever originated after the seventeenth-century confiscations and settlements when grantors (often absentees) employed them as a means of asserting their proprietorship periodically while enjoying rents and renewal fines. The 1849
Renewable Leasehold Conversion Act
(12 & 13 Vict., c. 105) gave legal status to such leases by enabling the lessees to acquire the
fee-farm grant
(freehold) from the lessors subject to a rent that was to be the old leasehold rent plus an estimated sum based on the average annual value of renewal fines.

lease and release
. A form of conveyance that emerged around 1600 to supersede the feoffment and the bargain and sale as the most popular instrument of conveyance until its abolition in the nineteenth century when the 1845 Real Property Act (8 & 9 Vict., c. 119) introduced the modern deed of conveyance. There were two stages to this instrument. First the grantor perfected a lease to the grantee for a year at a nominal rent (a peppercorn or bauble) making the grantee a tenant. On the following day the grantor released his rights in the property to the grantee making him full owner. The release effectively meant that the grantor conveyed his fee simple
reversion
to the grantee, placing him in possession of the fee simple. Unlike the
bargain and sale
and
feoffment
the lease and release was a convenient private yet legally valid conveyance.

Lebor Gabála Érenn
. (Ir., the Book of Invasion or Settlement) An eleventh-century pseudo-history of the settlement of Ireland. It begins with the creation and traces the settlement of Ireland from Noah's granddaughter, Cesair, through the Fir Bolgs, the Tuatha Dé Danann and down to the Milesians from whom the Gaels were descended. (Macalister,
Lebor
.)

Lecan, Book of
. Largely the work of Sligo historian and scribe, Giolla Íosa Mór mac Fir Bhisigh (ancestor of Dubhaltach MacFirbis), the fifteenth-century
Book of Lecan
(or the
Great Book of Lecan
) is a compilation of earlier Gaelic tracts, genealogies and poetry. It is similar to the
Book of Ballymote
in content and arrangement and comprises two copies of
Lebor Gabála Érenn
(the Book of Invasions), copies of historical and genealogical poems and a tract on the families and territorial divisions of Tír Fiachrach in Co. Sligo.
The Book of Lecan
is preserved in the library of the Royal Irish Academy. (Mulchrone,
The Book of Lecan
.)

Lecan, Yellow Book of
. (
Leabhar Buidhe Lecan
) Compiled by Donnoch and Giolla Íosa Mór mac Fir Bhisigh, the
Yellow Book
comprises a collection of ancient historical tracts in prose and verse on civil, ecclesiastical and military themes. It contains a collection of family and political poems concerning the O'Kellys and O'Connors of Connacht and the O'Donnells of Donegal, details of kings and battle, an imperfect copy of the
Táin Bó Cuailnge
, a tract on monastic rules in verse, an account of the reign and death of Muirchertach MacErca, king of Ireland, poems on ancient Tara together with a plan and explanation of the Teach Midhchuarta or Banqueting Hall, a biblical account of the Creation and Fall, a copy of Bruighean Da Dearga and it closes with a law tract. The original is in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. (Atkinson,
The Yellow Book
.)

leet money, leet silver, head money, head silver
. Associated with the
court leet
, leet money was a small sum payable by all tenants owing suit to the manor court.

Leicester School
. Properly, the Department of English Local History, a postgraduate department of Leicester University, the ‘Leicester School' is so called because of the contribution of its founder W. G. Hoskins, subsequent heads such as H. P. R. Finberg, Alan Everitt and Charles Phythian-Adams and associated historians such as Joan Thirsk and Margaret Spufford to the professionalisation of local history in Britain. A feature of the published work of the Leicester historians is the use of comparative and contrasting studies, techniques which reflect their belief that the best way to identify what is distinctive or typical about a local society is to consider that society, be it the village, parish, town, county or
pays
(distinctive region), within a broader context. Hoskins' pioneering advocacy of the landscape as a critical source for the reconstruction of past societies, proclaimed most memorably in his work
The Making of the English Landscape
, is echoed in the writing of Everitt, Thirsk and, latterly, Phythian-Adams. Since its foundation in 1948 the ‘school' has been continuously exercised by two interrelated issues: what constitutes an appropriate unit of study for the local historian and the relationship between local and national history. A satisfactory resolution to both questions has proved elusive but the debate has alerted historians to the need for greater subtlety in the selection of study units and to the importance of placing that unit within a broader perspective. (Phythian-Adams,
Re-thinking
.)

Leinster, Book of
. A twelfth-century compilation collected and transcribed by Finn MacGorman, bishop of Kildare, for Dermot MacMurrough Kavanagh by order of Aodh Mac Crimhthainn, Kavanagh's tutor. It begins with a book of invasions of Ireland followed by a succession of monasteries down to 1169 and the succession and obituaries of provincial and minor kings. The genealogies and pedigrees (
Leinster
contains the oldest surviving collection of pedigrees) of kings and saints relate largely to Leinster. Like the
Yellow Book of Lecan
, the
Book of Leinster
contains poems on Tara and a plan and explanation of the
Teach Midhchuarta
(the Banqueting Hall). There are poems on the wars of the men of Leinster, Munster and Ulster, notably the battle of Ross na Righ between Leinstermen and Ulstermen at the beginning of the Christian period. (Best, Bergin and O'Brien,
The Book of Leinster.)

less eligibility
.
See
workhouse test.

Leth Chuinn
. (Ir., Conn's Half) An ancient division of Ireland corresponding to the northern half of the island.

Leth Mugha
. (Ir., Mugha's Half) An ancient division of Ireland corresponding to the southern half of the island.

liberal clubs
. Liberal or Independent clubs were middle-class organisations established following the general election of 1826 in which Catholic
forty-shilling freeholders
defied their landlords to vote for pro-emancipationists. It was intended that local clubs would be linked through county clubs to a central body in the
Catholic Association
campaign for emancipation. Literacy was a condition of membership which comprised gentry, clergy and literate farmers. (O'Ferrall,
Catholic emancipation
, pp. 145–6, 170–4, 215–27.)

liberate, librate
. 1: A chancery writ issued to the exchequer authorising the payment of an allowance or pension 2: A writ to the county sheriff instructing him to take in hand the estate of a person who has forfeited a recognisance 3: A writ issued to a jailer to deliver up a prisoner who has posted bail.

Liber munerum publicorum Hiberniae
. A directory of patentee office-holders in Ireland from medieval times down to the nineteenth century. In 1812 the commissioners of the
Irish Record Commission
decided to publish John Lodge's unfinished
Liber munerum publicorum Hiberniae
or the establishment of Ireland. Lodge, deputy-keeper of the rolls and records in the Bermingham Tower, died before 1810. In 1813 Rowley Lascelles was appointed to complete the work but following a disagreement with the commissioners he returned to London. In 1822 he agreed to complete and edit the work but his work was unsatisfactory and in 1830 it was decided not to proceed. At that time the work comprised seven parts and was considered imperfect, incomplete and riddled with irrelevant material. It finally made it to the printers in 1852 in two large folio volumes in the state Lascelles had left it. (Lascelles,
Liber munerum
.)

Liber Niger Alani
. See Alen's Register
.

liberty
. A civil jurisdiction, such as a manor, granted by the crown and independent of the county sheriff and the royal courts. The attendant rights and privileges of a liberty were specified in the charter of grant. Some liberties were located in frontier areas and emerged during periods of weak royal authority as a means of exercising control over the borderlands. Others, such as the Earl of Meath's liberty, the archbishop of Dublin's liberty of
St Sepulchre
and the liberty of St Patrick's (which actually lay within the archbishop of Dublin's liberty) were located in areas that had long remained settled. Within a liberty the lord had sovereign power for all but the four reserved crown pleas of arson, rape,
forestalling
and
treasure trove
together with correction of officers and employed an administrative structure rather like royal government writ small. Here could be found a lord, courts, an administration and even an army. The great liberties or franchises were administered by a
seneschal
, a
chancellor
(with his own seal and chancery), a
master of the rolls
, a treasurer and treasury, receivers and collectors, justices, attorneys, an
escheator
, a
coroner
, a chief sergeant and a sergeant-at-arms.
See
palatinate. (Otway-Ruthven, ‘Anglo-Irish shire', pp. 1–28; Quinn, ‘Anglo-Irish local government', pp. 354–381.)

librate
. Of land, as much as is worth one pound per year.
See
liberate.

Lichfield House Compact
(1835). A tacit agreement between the
Whigs
and Daniel O'Connell's Irish repeal parliamentarians to work together to keep the Tories from government. O'Connell and his party of about 25 MPs agreed to support a minority Whig government and to desist from pressing for repeal of the union and the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland for the moment in return for a reform package for Ireland. Substantial reforms were never on the cards because the house of lords remained a
Tory
bastion but
tithe
reform (1838), the
Municipal Corporations Reform Act
(1840), an extension of parliamentary suffrage, an increase in the number of Catholics employed by the administration, police reform and a more even-handed application of the law flowed from the compact. (Graham, ‘Lichfield House compact, 1835', pp. 209–225.)

life tenancy, life estate
. An estate held for the life of the current owner only and not in
fee simple
. It was established by means of a will or marriage settlement. A life estate could not be sold because few would consider purchasing an estate that might terminate suddenly on the death of the vendor. Life tenants could not alter the order of succession which was established by the deed that created the life tenancy. The key legislative impediment to the alienation of family estates was the 1285 statute of
De Donis Conditionalibus
which sought to ensure that family estates passed intact to the next generation by imposing restraints on the alienability of land and forbidding the barring of entails. The courts, however, proved unwilling to accept such limits on alienability and permitted the barring of entails through the fictitious and collusive actions of
fine
and
recovery
.
See
entail.