Central government refers to the bureaucratic machine that administered the medieval lordship of Ireland on behalf of the king of England. From 1171, the English king found it necessary to put in place a system that allowed him to govern his subjects in Ireland and preserve and develop his rights there from a distance. While recent research has identified considerable continuity in many features of settlement, economy, and society in Ireland before and after the conquest, in the sphere of government there was little recognizable administration with which the Anglo-Normans could link. Therefore, in most respects, the machinery of government had to be modeled on that found in England, where by the end of the twelfth century an organized administrative system was taking shape, which could be imposed on the newly conquered lands.
The system developed gradually in Ireland, probably originating in the lord John’s visit of 1185. The king’s place was taken by a chief governor who had the title of justiciar, or king’s lieutenant. He was assisted by a number of professional administrators: the treasurer, chancellor, and escheator. The two principal departments or offices of the administration were the exchequer and the chancery.
The Exchequer
The exchequer was the first specialized department of government to appear in Ireland. This development mirrored events in England, where the exchequer had been the first branch of government to become detached from the king’s itinerant household. From the time John became lord of Ireland, financial arrangements were put in place to collect revenue and pay expenses, and by 1200 this organization was being described as the exchequer. In its early days it appears that the justiciar was primarily responsible for rendering the accounts of the exchequer, but from at least 1217 the title of treasurer emerged as the designation of the chief clerk in charge of the exchequer. During the early thirteenth century the treasurer was second in importance only to the justiciar, but lost this position with the increase in the powers of the chancellor.
The treasurer was assisted by first one and later two chamberlains, and during the course of the thirteenth century a range of other minor officials appear that correspond to those of the English exchequer, such as the chancellor of the exchequer who was responsible for the exchequer seal, the chancellor’s clerk, and the remembrancers who kept the records. The exchequer had its own court, which could determine financial disputes. The judges of this court were called barons of the exchequer and they are mentioned as early as 1207. They appear at this stage to have been prominent members of the administration. The emergence of professional barons, whose sole job it was to determine actions in the exchequer court, dates from the later thirteenth century.
The primary function of the exchequer was to receive and disburse the Irish revenues and to bring royal officials, particularly the sheriffs, to account. Each accountable minister was required to appear at Dublin twice a year, at Easter and Michaelmas. The exchequer was composed of two departments, which between them kept four main series of rolls. The receipt and issue rolls were produced by the lower exchequer and were records of income and expenditure. The upper exchequer produced the pipe rolls, which contained the audited accounts of the various officials who received and spent money on behalf of the crown. The memoranda rolls were also produced by the upper exchequer and contained records of correspondence, proceedings regarding accounts, and other miscellaneous material.
Very few original rolls now exist, and the workings of the exchequer must be reconstructed by means of calendars and transcripts.
Exchequer revenues were mainly derived from the profits of justice, the royal demesne (including the towns), escheats (see below), and royal service or scutage. They varied considerably throughout the medieval period, reaching their peak in the 1290s when, for a time, exchequer income was more than £9,000 annually. The revenues declined drastically in the early fourteenth century to an annual average of only £1,200 in the early years of the reign of Edward III. They rose slightly during the later fourteenth century, averaging about £2,000 per annum. However, in the fifteenth century, when the area under the control of the central government severely contracted, they shrank even more.
In contrast to England, where by the fourteenth century all government departments had ceased to move about with the royal household, in Ireland much more of the government remained itinerant. The exchequer was the only completely sedentary part of the administration. It sat in Dublin until 1361, when it was briefly and unsuccessfully moved to Carlow in an attempt to bring it closer to the towns and shires of the south.
The Chancery
The chancery was the secretariat of the Dublin government, which issued letters bearing the Irish great seal in the name of the king. These included writs of summons to parliament and copies of English statutes for circulation in Ireland. The chancery also drafted reports on the state of Ireland and messages to the king from the council or parliament. In Ireland, as in England, the chancery developed rather more slowly than some of the other departments. During the first fifty years of the lordship it appears that chancery business was conducted by the justiciar’s household clerks, and letters bore the justiciar’s own seal. The separate Irish chancery began in 1232, and the first Irish chancellor was Ralph Neville, bishop of Chichester and chancellor of England, who was granted the Irish chancery for life. He performed his functions through a deputy, and on his death in 1244, his deputy, then Robert Luttrell, was continued as chancellor of Ireland. From this date the office had a continuous independent existence, and the chancellor became the most senior member of the Irish council. The office was held by a mixture of professional administrators and ecclesiastics, such as the priors of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (the Knights Hospitallers) in Ireland.
The chancellor was paid an annual fee and also received the fees paid for sealing letters with the great seal. He was expected to maintain a staff of clerks out of this amount. However, a constant criticism of the chancery was that it was under-staffed, with too few clerks, and those of doubtful qualifications. About 1285 it was alleged that there was only one chancery clerk, who knew little of its business. Several attempts were made at reform and reorganization, but they met with little success. English chancery clerks were sent over from time to time, particularly in the fourteenth century, in an attempt to raise standards, but the Irish chancery continued to be seen as rather unprofessional, and it did not develop specialist functions similar to those that developed in England. Similarly, the medieval Irish chancery rolls did not develop the elaborate subdivisions of the English chancery. It issued two basic kinds of letters, letters patent and letters close, which were differentiated by their wording and by the method of attaching the seal. Letters patent, which included appointments and grants and were intended to be shown to interested parties, had a seal hanging from a cord or strip of parchment, while the seal on letters close, which contained instructions and orders, was attached after the document had been rolled up and had to be broken in order to read it. The annually compiled patent and close rolls of the chancery contained copies of these letters. Most of this original documentation has not survived, but there have been attempts to reconstruct the rolls from a variety of substitute material.
The chancery had no fixed abode but traveled around the country, usually in the company of the justiciar who witnessed all the letters issued by this department. An attempt in 1395 to provide a permanent base in Dublin was unsuccessful.
The Escheator
The escheator was the official who was in charge of administering and accounting for the lands that came into the king’s hands as a result of vacancies in bishoprics and religious houses, minority of the heirs of tenants-in-chief, and forfeitures. In Ireland this office assumed a much greater significance than its equivalent in England because of the importance the king attached to securing the feudal revenues of the colony, particularly those arising from vacant bishoprics and religious houses. The Irish escheator therefore, unlike his English counterpart, was among the most prominent of Irish ministers, holding a place next in importance after the chancellor and treasurer (in 1346, for example, the justiciar was instructed to act in all matters by the advice of the chancellor, treasurer, and escheator). The escheator was a leading member of the council and was paid an annual fee of £40. He could, however, earn a good deal more than this: in the middle of the fourteenth century there is a record of the escheator being paid 20 shillings for the execution of a single writ.
The first known, regularly appointed escheator was Geoffrey of St. John, appointed in 1250. Before that date it appears that the justiciar was responsible for accounting for escheats, although there is some mention of a specially appointed officer. After 1250 there is a regular succession of escheators, and the workings of the office become clear. The escheator took possession of land on behalf of the king and held inquisitions to determine the exact value of the lands and the identity and age of the next heir. If the land remained for a time in the king’s hands it was administered by the escheator, either personally or by appointed custodians. The escheator’s functions were spread all over the lordship and necessitated the employment of deputies or sub-escheators. These officials first appear in the records around 1270, but probably existed much earlier.
The escheator accounted for the accrued revenues of his office at the exchequer. In the thirteenth century the income of the escheatry was substantial, but it declined severely in the following centuries and so, too, did the importance of the office of escheator. He was gradually removed from his important position in the official hierarchy, and by the fifteenth century he had ceased to be a member of the council or an official on an equal footing with the chancellor and treasurer.
The central government of medieval Ireland, modeled on that of England with some modifications, can be seen to have operated more or less competently during the first centuries of the Anglo-Norman lordship. However, the power of this central authority could never be considered to be equivalent to that of royal government in England, and in the later Middle Ages the system started to break down as a result of a combination of circumstances. The records reveal frequent changes in personnel, as effective officials were promoted to positions in the English administration and corrupt and inefficient ones were ejected. There were many instances of peculation and malpractice, and in general, confidence in the agents of government was not high. The very low level of the annual finances meant that the government could not maintain a regular payment of fees and wages to its own officials. The surviving records reveal that even the fees of high officials were regularly in arrears. This increased the incidence of corruption as officials sought to redress the shortfall in expected income by peculation. The growing political and cultural fragmentation of Ireland piled on difficulties for a centralized system of government. As the maintenance of peace and stability became more costly and more problematic, so too did the potential of the administration to govern become correspondingly less effective and less efficient.
