Dublin in 1608 transcript

The following is a transcript of a talk to coincide with the launch of the publication, Early Modern Dubliners, by Dr Maighread Ní Mhurchadha on 28th August, 2008. Audio

Welcome to the Dublin City Public Libraries and Archive Podcast. In this episode, Dr Maighread Ní Mhurchadha takes us back to the Dublin of 1608 and recounts stories of Dubliners of the time, who despite many difficulties maintained a spirit of independence, a belief in the importance of their city and a strong sense of community. Recorded in front of a live audience at Dublin City Library and Archive, Pearse Street on 28 August, 2008 to mark the publication of Early Modern Dubliners.

On the 24th November 1608 Richard Bolton, recorder (or legal officer) of the city of Dublin,  who was in London on the city's business wrote a letter to John Cusack, then mayor of Dublin. Even though his work had not been completed, he announced that he intended to return to Dublin and allow his colleague, Michael Hamlin, to complete the work on behalf of the city.  His excuse was that he lived in London as he said, 'at great charges'. This was rather surprising for he had a good salary, was paid generous allowances and was, himself an Englishman. The court was in London and on the face of it, it seemed a good place for an up-and-coming young lawyer to be. Yet Bolton wanted to return to Dublin. What was the attraction of Dublin in 1608?

We are fortunate today in having such a marvellous resource as the Dublin City Library and Archive. Mary Clark, Máire Kennedy, their colleagues in the library and the administrative staff do a wonderful job in caring for the city's treasured documents. However, things were not always so. At the Christmas 1608 meeting of the Dublin civic assembly - the forerunner of the city council - the commons, that is the representatives of the ordinary citizens, complained that many charters, books, rolls and muniments belonging to the city had come into the hands of certain of the citizens by some sinister means, and were being retained by these people, as they said, 'to the great hurt' of the city, and asked that action be taken to recover them. There was a suggestion that the guilty parties were themselves members of the assembly and it was decided to hold a sworn inquiry of members of the assembly, I quote:

to bring in such writings and charters belonging to the city as any of them have in their custody, and withal that they and every of them do declare upon their oath where any such charters and writing do remain, or in whose custody they are, or have been, to the uttermost of their knowledge, and such charters and writings that shall be brought in to be laid up safely into the Treasury House.

This meeting took place in January 1609, according to modern dating at the assembly's final meeting for the Julian year 1608. In Early Modern times in Ireland and England, the year, which we now call the Julian year, ran from 25 March 1608 to the following 24 March. It is probable that Richard Bolton, by then safely back in Dublin, had a hand in framing the order. The fact that the assembly could discuss such matters as the municipal archives was significant, as the city was just emerging from one of its darkest and saddest experiences, the plague, which had occurred just about four years earlier and which forms the subject of the second story in Early Modern Dubliners. Although it probably wasn't obvious at the time, the rather stern entry in the assembly rolls, directing that a search for the missing records be carried out, was one sign of a return to normality.

At first glance the Julian year 1608 may seem to have been an unfortunate choice for a talk on Early Modern Dublin. In fact, I was strongly tempted to subtitle the talk 'the year when nothing happened.' The government authorities at the time were preoccupied with two main issues, namely the activities of the Earl of Tyrone on the continent, to which he had fled in the previous year, and their plans for a plantation in Ulster, which was to take place in the following year. The city of Dublin was left almost, but not quite, to its own devices and, indeed, thanks to the efforts of the city assembly at the time, the city's own records are our main source of information on what happened in Dublin during 1608.

In his book, The annals of Dublin, Father O'Donnell did not list a single event for 1608. Nine entries for that year were listed in the chronology contained in A new history of Ireland. Only one of these, the publication of the Irish translation of The Book of common prayer, can claim even a tenuous connection with the city. Even that entry is probably incorrect for, while the title page gives the year 1608 as the date of publication, the translator's dedication contained in the book is dated October 1609. However, this dedication does give us a picture of what one man was doing in Dublin in 1608. Archbishop Uilliam O Domhnaill of Tuam, the translator, then treasurer of St. Patrick's Cathedral, described how he went from his home in St. Patrick's Close every day to visit the printer John Franckton whose business was then in Castle Street, while the book was being printed. We can just imagine poor John Franckton's reaction when he saw the clergyman arriving each day to inspect what he must have regarded as a very difficult and delicate printing job in a strange language. It cannot have made his task any easier.

Let us hope the archbishop to be was well wrapped up when he took his daily walk. One of the most striking things about Early Modern Dublin was just how cold the weather was. Writing later in the century Gerard Boate, while acknowledging that the Irish weather was very temperate in comparison with that of other countries in the same latitude, described it as follows:

There had been some winters, wherein it had frozen ten or twelve days together, so as the Liffey and other the like rivers were quite frozen, and might be gone upon by men and beasts. But those are altogether extraordinary, and do come very seldom, hardly once in the space of ten or twelve years.

It is hard for us today to picture what it was like for men and animals to travel across the frozen Liffey but that is what sometimes happened. Keeping warm was a major problem for Dubliners. While much of Ireland was still forested, Dublin and its vicinity had very few trees. Sea-coals, which were the ordinary fuel used in Dublin had to be imported from England, Wales and Scotland. It was probably no coincidence that the well-known drawings on John Speed's map of Ireland showed people at all levels of society dressed in warm, heavy clothing.

The winter of 1607-8 had been particularly cold. The first task of the assembly at its April meeting was to vote money, as they said, "to repair the defects of the piles of the Bridge, happened unto them by means of the late frost'. This may seem a mundane enough task today, but when we remember that this was the city's only bridge, which linked present-day Church Street on the northern side with Bridge Street to the south, we realise how important it was that the civic assembly maintained it properly. In fact, the bridge was later to feature in the incidents described in final story of Early Modern Dubliners. At the July meeting of the assembly it became clear that the problem was really serious for, not only was the bridge dangerous, but the slipway adjoining it was also in a ruinous condition. The assembly quickly set about having the repairs carried out for, in his account for the year, the city treasurer noted the approval of a payment in August to Mr Lany, master of the works, for repairing the piles of the bridge and in September a further payment for materials for the repairs was approved by the mayor.

The appearance of the city was changing in other ways. We are very fortunate in having a map of Dublin which if not actually drawn in 1608, was prepared very close to that date. This enables us to picture the physical layout of the city at the time. It was a busy seaport with its principal quays at Wood Quay and Merchants' Quay. Problems at the bar prevented larger ships from coming into town, but a fleet of gabbards, or small ships, conveyed passengers and goods to and from the points where large ships were anchored. We can get some idea of how little building there was north of the Liffey from a deposition made twenty-five years later by Robert Preston of Rogerstown, County Meath. Speaking to the Court of Admiralty he told them that, as he was standing on the bridge of the city of Dublin he saw a ship on fire about two leagues, that is about ten kilometres from the city, under the head of Howth.

While we have few pictures of Dublin and Dubliners from this period, we do have one very vivid image from a book published in 1608, with which, I'm sure many of you are familiar. Does this title page give a true picture of the city? Was this really what Newgate was like? If we remove the heads of the northern chiefs from the picture we may get some idea of the appearance of the city gates at the time. We know that quite a lot of building was going on in the vicinity of Newgate, near St. Audoen's church at this period and that the still rather new technology of brick-building had become very popular. Of course Newgate was not just a gate. It was a gate which housed the city gaol, and in October 1607, Edward Horton, the gaoler, had notified the assembly that the portcullis of the gate was in such a bad state that it would collapse if the city did not fix it. The assembly agreed to do so and in the following January they decided to clean the ditch leading from Newgate to Gormonde's (or Ormonde's) gate and to build a brick wall from the house of a man called Hickey, a smith to Gormonde's gate. The reasons given from the building of the wall point up both the attractions and the problems of the city in Early Modern times. The assembly made it clear that they wished to beautify the gate and, at the same time use the new six-foot-high brick wall to prevent the dumping of rubbish in the area.

The man whose duty it was to see that these works were carried out properly was one of the masters of the works, John Lany. Responsibility for paying for these works lay with the city treasurer. During the early part of the year 1608 - changes in personnel holding office came into force at the October meeting - the city treasurer was Alderman Francis Taylor, later to be beatified as one of the Irish martyrs. Francis Taylor was a careful accountant, who served as city treasurer on a number of occasions. He set out the various payments in some detail in the remarkable city treasurer's book which is still held in this building. The accounting system was quite complex. The city treasurer (or his clerk) using Roman numerals, set out the amounts first in sterling, or English money and then converted them to Irish money, which at the time was worth only three-quarters of the value of English money. Occasionally, we find summary amounts entered in Arabic numerals, for these had to used for calculations. We know that Francis Taylor, on behalf of the city, paid for 46,400 bricks which cost 12 shillings a thousand. The man who supplied the bricks was George Burrowes, who had set up a brickworks on the strand, east of the Steyn, about ten years previously - that's very close to where we are tonight. The bricks had to be brought from the brickworks to Newgate and payment for this was made to Francis Cooper and others. The work also required 349 barrels of sand. John Forrett and the other masons were paid by the height and length of the wall, which was six feet high. The lime had to brought from Castleknock. Finally, the city arms had to be carved and set up on the new brick wall at a cost of 22 shillings (or £1 pound 2s.) sterling. Later in the year, the civic assembly leased the new brick wall and the ground inside it for eighty-one years to Edmond Malone, merchant.

The walled city of Dublin was tiny in extent but in 1608 the population, following the plague, was probably very low. While it is difficult to estimate, it cannot have been more than about 5,000. In our terms, it was the size of a small town, where, in all probability, everyone knew everyone else. Indeed, the population was so small that even today we ourselves feel we can get to know many of the citizens, poor as well as rich, by reading the surviving documents. In early seventeenth-century Dublin strangers, and this would have included people from as far away as Glasnevin and Clontarf would have been easily identified. Not alone did the people know each other but the free citizens of Dublin were represented in the civic assembly by twenty-four alderman, forty-eight demi-jurés and ninety-six numbers, a total of 168 members, which, if my population estimate is correct, meant a representative for about every thirty residents, men, women and children, free and unfree. Even if the population estimate is doubled the ratio of representatives to residents was still, by our standards, amazing low. The authorities certainly knew what was going on in the city. The population of Dublin, although made up of many elements, was remarkably close-knit and cohesive. This strong sense of community was a major factor in enabling the city to survive the religious and other tensions which existed at this period.

Freedom of the city was acquired in a formal way by a process known as 'admission to the franchise'. The main benefit of freedom was the right to trade freely in the city. It is interesting to examine the names and occupations of those admitted to the franchise of the city during Julian year 1608. The total figure of sixty-six was well up to normal and does not seem to have been unduly affected by the recent plague. Strangely enough the most common surname by far in the period 1575 to 1610, which was Browne, did not appear in the list for 1608. The most common girls' name, Margaret, did not appear either, but there were only seven women admitted to the franchise in that year. However, as usual, John, was a very popular name among the men. More than a fifth of all the men admitted in 1608 had that Christian name. In other respects the make-up of those admitted differed only slightly from the usual patterns. In general, the percentage of those admitted as the sons or daughters of freemen and those who had completed apprenticeships, in other words, those likely to have been born in the city or to have been there for seven years, probably since childhood serving an apprenticeship was down a little. The percentage of girls was up slightly but the numbers were so small this increase can hardly be regarded as significant. As far as occupations were concerned there was an increase in the percentage of those in clothing and footwear sector. The newcomers to the trades included one button-maker, three glovers, three shoemakers and seven tailors.

These additional craftsmen were needed. There is an entry in the assembly rolls which shows how proud the city fathers were of the dignity of the city and how anxious they were to keep up appearances. It is taken from the report of the meeting held on  21 October and reads as follows:

whereas the commons humbly required that there might be a reformation of the abuses of the several numbers in their attires, and specially their gowns, on station days, for the more beautifying of the said stations: it is therefore ordered and agreed, by the authority aforesaid, that from henceforth the younger aldermen shall provide themselves violet gowns upon every station day, when the elder aldermen will wear their scarlet gowns, and the offender to forfeit forty shillings unto the mayor, sheriffs and citizens, to be levied of their goods and chattels, and everyone of the rest of the numbers to wear Turkey gowns (these were probably red, though they could have been turquoise too) and the sheriffs to wear partelett gowns (gowns with ruffs), upon pain of forfeiture of 10 shillings to be levied in manner as aforesaid, and their gowns to be provided by the feast of Christmas next for the numbers and sheriffs. And for the aldermen by Easter next for that, for there is no violet to be had.

There was no mention of the Dublin blue in this colourful array!

Another task, which the assembly had to face early in the year, was how to deal with Martin Hussey. This highlighted a darker side of life in Renaissance Dublin, which had developed because of religious differences in the city. The city had recently come through a period during which seven prominent Catholic citizens, known as 'recusants', had been fined heavily and imprisoned for failing to attend divine service in the established Protestant church. Another difficulty with which the aldermen had to cope during this period was the requirement that certain office-holders such as the mayor and sheriffs had to take the oath of supremacy, acknowledging the king as supreme head of the church. This the Catholic aldermen could not, in conscience do. The offices of mayor and sheriff, though they conferred great honour on their holders, were not exactly popular as, particularly in the case of the mayor they entailed considerable costs to the office-holders. In order to be fair to all aldermen, the city had developed strict rules of succession. Despite the imposition of heavy fines, the refusal of Catholic aldermen to take the oath resulted in serious problems. Martin Hussey, a merchant from a well-known County Meath family and a freeman for over thirty years was elected sheriff for the year 1608-9, and refused to serve. For this he was fined £100  in Irish money. Not only did he fail to pay the fine but he disappeared. Following a vain search for him at his home in Culmullen, County Meath and in Valentia Island, County Kerry, he eventually returned to Dublin, submitted to the aldermen and agreed to pay the fine, on condition that he was discharged from all offices in the city and allowed to continue his trade. This was confirmed by the civic assembly at its April meeting. This well-documented case is a good illustration of the sort of compromise which the assembly was prepared to make to enable Catholics to continue to take part in civic activities. They would be allowed to follow their consciences but would be required to pay for that privilege. The next Catholic be called on to fill the office of sheriff, Patrick Croly, a shoemaker, excused himself on the grounds of poverty, health and responsibility for his children and asked to be discharged, as he said, 'upon some reasonable fine'. The recusancy problem had not been solved.

The Martin Hussey case had some cost repercussions for the assembly. One of those who had been sent out to search for him was the city trumpeter, John Brooks. He claimed that the amount of one pound sterling paid to him for his effort was insufficient, and was rewarded with the doubling of this fee. This small incident shows just how versatile the assembly's employees were.

In the Autumn it emerged that the new Protestant mayor, John Cusack, was very unpopular. He had substituted for a Catholic Robert Kennedy, in October because of Kennedy's reluctance to take the oath. Towards the end year, the situation reached boiling point when the more equitable sharing of the cost of supporting soldiers, billeted on the city, once again became an issue, as it often did in Dublin. A number of those who supported a widening of the categories to share this burden were imprisoned for a brief period, but later released in November 1608. These problems continued in the final months of the year.

We know the names of a number of citizens who died during the year. One of these, Sir Geoffrey Fenton, played a part in the literary as well as the political life of Dublin and was a friend of Thomas Smith, the subject of the first story in Early Modern Dubliners. Another, John Shelton, a courageous Catholic alderman who died on 23rd March, just as the year was drawing to its close had been mayor of Dublin for two months in 1604, but was then excluded because of his refusal to take the oath of supremacy.

Towards the end of the year there was more bad weather. On 4 January, a ship called the William of Ayr in Scotland was lost with all its crew in a tempest at Poolbeg, reminding us once again of the importance of sea and ships in the life of the city.

By the end of the year, Michael Hamlin, the agent to whom Richard Bolton had delegated the finalisation of the negotiations between the city of Dublin and the crown relating to customs, had completed his work and was preparing to return from London to Dublin. At the same time another man, a young law student of Lincoln's Inn was also planning to return. This young man, by a strange coincidence, was destined to succeed Richard Bolton as recorder of Dublin in 1614, his name was William Dongan and he could hardly have been more different from Bolton. William was a Dubliner, a Catholic and an owner of property in Ireland, including an estate in Ballyboghil, inherited from his father John, an alderman of Dublin. Hamlin and Dongan met and Hamlin agreed to transport William's clothes in his own trunk. According to his own account, Dongan packed one black satin doublet, (a kind of close-fitting jacket), a pair of hose of Flanders serge, a pair of hose of black cloth, one cloak of broadcloth, sad colour (probably dark green), with a cape of velvet lined with russet baize and two laces broad about it, one pair of silk stockings in the pocket of serge hose of a cream colour, a pair of hangers (short swords), three pair of shoes and one pair of boots. He packed separately, one black doublet of serge, one pair of stockings, one pair of silk gaiters, one pair of shoes and pantoffles, (that's slippers) and one pair of hose. William was certainly determined to make an impression on his return to his native city. However, as events were to show, he was a rather naive young man. He set out from London for Chester early in the new year and the strange events which followed form the subject of the third story in Early Modern Dubliners.

I hope you will enjoy reading it.

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