CLYN, FRIAR JOHN (d. 1349?) (Medieval Ireland)

John Clyn was an Anglo-Irish Franciscan friar and the author of Annals of Ireland by Friar John Clyn, written in Kilkenny and covering the period from the "beginning of the world" to 1349. According to the seventeenth-century antiquarian James Ussher, Clyn was born in Leinster and held the degree of doctor. The surname Clyn is not common in Ireland, but there is a townland a few miles from Kilkenny called Clinstown. From the annals, we learn that Clyn became the first guardian of the friary of Carrickbeg (Carrick-on-Suir) in 1336, when the earl of Ormond presented the property to the Franciscans. Clyn was present in Kilkenny friary in 1348 during the Black Death, when he identified himself as the author of the annals. The annals are famous for a dramatic firsthand account of the Black Death in Ireland in 1349. A very rough seventeenth-century transcript claims that Clyn was also guardian of the Franciscan friary of Kilkenny. Clyn’s original manuscript is no longer extant; Sir Richard Shee, sovereign (mayor) of Kilkenny, possessed the manuscript in 1543, and by 1631 it had been acquired by David Rothe, bishop of Ossory. Four main seventeenth-century transcripts survive, and they state that the annals were copied from the community book of the Franciscans of Kilkenny. There is scant reference to Franciscan affairs, but as the annals reportedly were part of the community book of the Franciscans of Kilkenny, there would have been no need for such information in the annals. The annals consist of very brief entries, with years often repeated and out of sequence, until 1333. All four transcripts agree that in 1333 a new section of the annals commenced. Clyn’s main interest is in the military society of the area surrounding Kilkenny in a troubled period of Anglo-Irish history. Internal evidence suggests that Clyn was familiar with military society and displayed a great interest in knighthood, noting who was knighted by whom. Clyn respected a certain code of conduct, which led him to express displeasure at actions, perpetrated by either the native Irish or the Anglo-Irish, that were contrary to the highest standards of knighthood. Clyn has sometimes been considered as hostile to the Irish, and indeed during this troubled period it was only to be expected that they should receive censure, but Clyn is remarkable for his criticism of the troublesome members of the Anglo-Irish nation also. Clyn is particularly dismayed by treachery or betrayal, in any form and by either nation. On balance, Clyn only refers to the Irish nation in relation to its effect on the Anglo-Irish nation. Clyn exhibited a particular familiarity with the local Mac Gillapatrick family. Among the Anglo-Irish, it is the de la Frene family that occasions most interest. The dominant personality in Clyn’s annals is Fulk de la Frene, whose knighting by the earl of Ormond Clyn reports in 1335. Fulk emerges, in Clyn’s annals, as a strong military man, and this is reflected by the reports of his victories over the Irish and his success in expelling Anglo-Irish troublemakers. The longest entry in the annals is for 1348, which describes the horrors of the Black Death, an event that the writer regarded as truly catastrophic and apocalyptic. Clyn’s account of the plague opens with pilgrimages to the local St. Mullins Well; these were, he tells us, inspired by fear of the plague. His entry includes the number of people who died in Dublin from August to Christmas, the number who had died in the Franciscan friaries of Drogheda and Dublin from the beginning of the plague to Christmas, and the information that the plague was at its height in Kilkenny during Lent. Although Clyn enters the number of Dominicans who died in Kilkenny, he makes no mention of Franciscan deaths, but this information could have been entered in another section of the community book. Clyn also includes an account of the plague in Avignon and a lengthy account of an apocalyptic vision given to a monk at the Cistercian monastery at Tripoli in 1347. It is with great sorrow, and a great eulogy, that Clyn reports, in his last entry, the death of Fulk in 1349. The seventeenth-century transcripts suggest that Clyn died of the plague. Another possibility is that Clyn was moved to a different friary as part of a possible redistribution necessary after the decimation of some friaries. A third possibility is simply that Clyn ceased to write once his friend, and perhaps patron, Fulk de la Frene, had died.