Monetization and the Military Economy

Much has been written about the “Edwardian military revolution” of the fourteenth century that saw the English Crown shift away from armies raised by commissions of array toward those comprising paid professionals raised by captains acting as subcontractors on the Crown’s behalf.Footnote ¹³ Across the Irish sea a parallel transformation was gripping the military establishment of Gaelic Ireland. Heralded by the arrival of the gallowglass in the latter half of the thirteenth century, warfare in Ireland was becoming increasingly professionalized by the opening decades of the fourteenth century.Footnote ¹⁴ Instead of territorial levies, mercenaries or men serving for pay comprised an ever-increasing proportion of the armies fielded by Irish kings the length and breadth of the island.Footnote ¹⁵ The use of professional soldiers gave Irish leaders a strategic and tactical flexibility they had previously lacked, allowing them to both keep armies in the field for longer and exert more control over the loyalties of their soldiers.

Irish soldiers serving for pay can be found readily in the records of the Dublin government, while minor Irish leaders were perfectly happy to seal indentures of retinue with English magnates such as the Earl of Ormond.Footnote ¹⁶ If we are to judge by a 1398 agreement between Toirdhealbhach Ó Domhnaill, king of Tír Chonaill (r. 1380–1422) and Toirdhealbhach Mac Suibhne (d. 1399), then legal contracts regarding military service were also being made between Irish kings and mercenaries by the end of the fourteenth century. Although the agreement between Ó Domhnaill and Mac Suibhne is presented in the encomiastic language of a family chronicle, it is not merely an ad-hoc arrangement but is specific in its terms of service: how many men, what equipment they are expected to possess, the penalties should Mac Suibhne fail to meet the stipulated requirements, and most importantly how Mac Suibhne and his men should be paid.Footnote ¹⁷ Indeed, it has much in common with the indentures of military service the Earl of Ormond made with both Irish and English leaders in the south. Ormond’s military indentures, whether with Englishmen or Irishmen, mostly center around the exchange of money. For instance, in a 1359 indenture between Ormond and Muircheartach Ó Braonáin (Muriertagh Obrenan), the earl promised to pay Ó Braonáin “5 marks of silver” (quinque marcas argenti) yearly and in return Ó Broanáin would serve the earl “with all his power” (cum toto posse suo) at his own expense when he could return home and at the earl’s expense when serving him elsewhere in Ireland.Footnote ¹⁸

Soldiers in late medieval Ireland also seem to have been quite content to receive their pay in money when serving the Dublin government. In 1355, Mac Briain of Aherlow (Mcbren del Norlagh) received £18 15s. for the service of 12 hobelars and 60 foot from 11 December 1354 to 11 January 1355 and £8 13s. 3d. for the same 12 hobelars and 59 foot from 11 until 25 January.Footnote ¹⁹ In 1364, Conchobhar Ó Broin (Congher O Bryn) was paid £4 for the service of 29 foot for six months during the summer of 1360, while in 1366 Síoda Mac Conmara (Shyde McConmarre) was paid £5 6s. 8d. for the service of “a good company of hobelars” against the Irish of Leinster.Footnote ²⁰ Mac Briain, Síoda Mac Conmara, and Conchobhar Ó Broin were not great lords and, with the exception of Mac Briain, their contracts with the English government were not particularly lucrative. However, they do offer a glimpse into the monetized military economy in operation: relatively small retinues commanded by a captain, who were paid in cash, and who served fixed campaigns.

The Irish annals offer further evidence of the short-term nature of many military contracts. In 1315, Derbforgaill Ní Chonchobhair (d. 1354), the wife of Aodh Ó Domhnaill king of Tír Chonaill (r. 1281–1333), “with all the gallowglasses and men of the Clan Murtagh that she could obtain, marched against the churches of Drumcliff and plundered many of its clergy” (dol di fein mar oen re a bfuair do gallocclaechaib & do Clainn Murcertaig fo templaib Droma Cliab & moran do clerchib Droma Cliab do arcain le).Footnote ²¹ The following year, Derbforgaill once again “hired a band of gallowglasses and gave them a reward for killing Ruaidri son of Domnall O Conchobair” (do fastod ceitherni galloclaech & luach do tabairt doib do chind marbtha Ruaidri meic Domnaill h. Conchabair).Footnote ²² Art Óg Mac Murchadha Caomhánach is recorded as employing “many of the hired bands of Munster” (moran do cheithernuib congbala na Muman), while in 1514 “War arose between O’Domnaill (namely, Aodh) and O’Neill (namely, Art junior) and many persons were hired on each side by them” (Coccadh ar n-erghi ider Ó Domhnaill (.i. Aodh) & Ó Néill (.i. Art Óg) & moran doíne d’fhostadh gacha taoba doib).Footnote ²³ Chancery records also document the accumulation of troops by Irish kings prior to the outset of a campaign. In March 1372, it was reported that Brian Sreamach Ó Briain, king of Thomond (r. 1369–1400), had “gathered to himself a great multitude of Irish enemies” and “proceeded anew to Munster with a great force of Irish enemies and rebels of the King to destroy the King’s faithful people in the said part.”Footnote ²⁴ Similarly, Art Óg Mac Murchadha Caomhánach, “having gathered to himself a multitude of the Irish of those parts,” is recorded as perpetrating “various homicides, depredations, burnings and other evils on the King’s people in counties Wexford, Kilkenny, Carlow and Kildare.”Footnote ²⁵ What is more, Irish leaders were seemingly able to induce soldiers to abandon their erstwhile English employers, as happened to Thomas Butler, prior of Kilmainham (d. 1419), when the Uí Bhroin managed to hire 800 of his 1,500 mercenaries out from under him, causing his expedition against them to collapse.Footnote ²⁶

For these kinds of short-term contracts, money, or at least silver bullion, would have been eminently useful. For the soldiers themselves, the advantages of money were clear. The peripatetic lifestyle of a mercenary was suited far more to payments in cash than in kind. Money was easily transportable and easy to use. Indeed, it may have been the need to pay mercenaries that drove the dissemination of the very first coinages in the ancient world.Footnote ²⁷ It seems likely that the Uí Bhroin had access to a readily accessible and transportable form of wealth with which they induced the defection of Thomas Butler’s mercenaries, the most obvious candidate being money. It seems certain that much of the military economy of late medieval Ireland functioned through the exchange of money. Even in Tír Chonaill at the very north west of the island, the relatively small denominations such as a “shilling” (scillig) or a “groat” (bonn) discussed in the Ó Domhnaill-Mac Suibhne agreement stand in testament to the ubiquitous use of money in the Irish military economy.Footnote ²⁸ As such, the ability of any Gaelic leader to raise a substantial army, as kings such as Art Mac Murchadha or Brian Sreamach Ó Briain did on numerous occasions, to a great extent presupposes regular access to relatively large quantities of specie.

Waterford and Gaelic Leinster

The military capabilities of Mac Murchadha and Ó Briain indicate that they could in fact raise the required specie to finance their military activities. If that is true, from where did they acquire it? In recent years, historians have begun to explore the connection between Irish military power and the commercialization of Ireland’s western seaboard through the international fishing industry during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.Footnote ²⁹ However, it is important to note that parts of Gaelic Ireland were exposed to commercial interests long before the late fifteenth century. Indeed, in much of the southern half of the island the commercial networks emanating from coastal towns such as Limerick, Cork, Waterford, New Ross, Dublin, and Drogheda had always included the Irish to some degree. However, following the collapse of the wool export trade in 1294 and the trade in grain during first half of the fourteenth century, hides came to dominate Ireland’s exports and the Irish, whose affinity with cattle farming needs no elaboration, were drawn further into the networks of the mercantile elite of the English-dominated coastal cities.Footnote ³⁰ This suited both parties and by the fifteenth century, political treatises such as the Libelle of Englyshe Polycye were listing hides as one of the most important commodities produced in Ireland, giving it pride of place as the first of the “commoditees” of Ireland.Footnote ³¹

In the wake of the Black Death, demand for leather and hides soared. Amid continuous outbreaks of plague, living standards in several parts of Europe began to rise. With the increase in the value of now-scarce labor, spending power also increased. For many regions such as Italy, England, and Flanders this ushered in the development of a consumer economy.Footnote ³² Key to the development of such an economy was the leather industry and the goods it produced. Leather was ubiquitous in medieval life. Shoes, gloves, hats, purses, belts, and items of clothing such as jerkins were all made from leather.Footnote ³³ It was also used to produce buckets, coffers, saddles, harnesses, scabbards, helmets, and armor. Blacksmiths used bellows made of leather, scribes wrote on parchment leaves, books were bound in boards covered with leather, and children played games with leather balls.Footnote ³⁴ In England, the leather industry ranked second only to the cloth industry. Maryanne Kowaleski has pointed out that craftsmen working with leather made up the second or third largest occupational group in most towns, outnumbered only by victuallers and cloth workers.Footnote ³⁵ This was a situation replicated in other European regions. Tax records from Tuscany revealed a similar pattern in Pisa and Florence where leather workers were the second largest declared occupation in the two cities.Footnote ³⁶ By the fifteenth century, Irish hides exported to Italy via Portugal provided much of the raw material required by these workers, with Pisa alone importing as many as thirty thousand hides a year from Ireland.Footnote ³⁷ For many reasons, Ireland benefited from a significant comparative advantage when it came to the raising of livestock and so represented an obvious source for the hides demanded by continental consumption habits, a fact that proved to be extremely profitable to the merchants of the coastal cities. That the late medieval merchant elite relied heavily on their Gaelic hinterlands as a source for commodities such as hides has long been acknowledged by scholars, yet little attention has been paid to the effect this relationship had on the Gaelic economies with which they interacted.Footnote ³⁸

In a letter to Richard II written after his men were attacked at the fair of “Ballymorir” (Ballymore-Eustace), Feidhlimidh Ó Tuathail (d. 1404), lord of the Uí Thuathail in Leinster, stated that “without buying and selling” he could “in no way live.”Footnote ³⁹ Major commercial centers in Leinster seemingly had similar concerns; in June 1403, the sovereign and community of New Ross were granted a license that allowed them to “treat” with and “sell” to the king’s Irish enemies.Footnote ⁴⁰ This license came with an added clause that legitimized the protection money the town had clearly already been paying to Art Óg Mac Murchadha Caomhánach. That they paid this “black rent” to Art reveals that his control had extended nearly to the confluence of the rivers Barrow and Suir. When combined with his earlier appointment as keeper of the roads between Carlow and Kilkenny, this put Art in control of the entire Barrow Valley, some of the richest and most fertile farmland on the island.Footnote ⁴¹

In accounting for Art’s success, Emmett O’Byrne credited the “diplomatic and military web” that stretched across the midlands from the mountains of east Leinster to Arra, which allowed him, “like no other Leinster ruler since Diarmait Mac Murchadha” to “recruit mercenaries on a large scale from west Leinster and the midlands.”Footnote ⁴² This statement is undoubtedly true: Art was indeed able to raise significant numbers of soldiers numbering into the thousands. However, it also elides the fact that recruiting mercenaries was an expensive business that often required a great deal of cash, or its equivalent. For the Irish of Leinster, that wealth came first from the reconquest of some of their more fertile lands, and secondly, increasing involvement in Anglo-Irish commercial networks in the south-east. As early as the 1340s, it had become apparent to English officials that there was a connection between the ability of the Irish of Leinster to trade and their ability to make war. This is indicated by the embargo the justiciar, Ralph Ufford (d. 1346), placed on trade with “les Obrynnes, Otothils, McMurghes & Onolans” before his campaign against them in 1344.Footnote ⁴³ The involvement of the Meic Mhurchadha in, and their domination of, Anglo-Irish commercial networks in the south-east, and particularly their drive to control the Barrow valley, reveals that they too were intimately aware that their ability to effectively make war hinged on the profits of trade. Hides were shipped in great numbers from Waterford during the fourteenth century. They were floated down the River Barrow in “small boats” to Waterford, whereupon they were loaded into larger merchant ships and freighted abroad.Footnote ⁴⁴ While Art could effectively control and tax the entire trade of the Barrow Valley, his own personal holdings and those of his clients seem to have been especially well positioned to take advantage of this trade. Art’s personal estates were largely concentrated in the area north of the Blackstairs Mountains stretching north toward Leighlin Bridge. In 1307, an ancestor of Art’s held lands from the Bigod lords of Carlow at Fennagh.Footnote ⁴⁵ From there the Meic Mhurchadha expanded both east and west to encompass Myshall and Dunleckny, which is located just south of Leighlin Bridge.Footnote ⁴⁶ In 1384, during a peace, Art complained that his tenants at “Dunlek” (Dún Leicne) were raided by certain men in the chief governor’s retinue.Footnote ⁴⁷

Under the lordship of the Bigods (1248–1306), much of this area had been encompassed by the manor of Fennagh, which was used primarily for cereal cultivation. Certainly, in the string of surviving receipts for the manor, cereals made up a much greater proportion of the manor’s income than all other produce.Footnote ⁴⁸ Yet in 1394, during Richard’s first expedition to Ireland, Thomas Mowbray (d. 1399), later Duke of Norfolk, was able to lift some eight thousand head of cattle from the district, implying that a transition from mainly arable agriculture to mainly pastoral agriculture had occurred in the intervening century.Footnote ⁴⁹ In total, Richard’s forces reived some twelve thousand cattle from the region controlled by Art’s tenants and clients.Footnote ⁵⁰ Under normal circumstances, many of the hides from these cattle would have made their way down the Barrow to New Ross and Waterford where ships would have carried them over the sea to England, Calais, Flanders, and France, bringing great profit to Art and his tenants along the Barrow.Footnote ⁵¹ One further avenue of income that was available to Art were the various fees and “black rents” he extracted from both the royal government and the English communities in Leinster, which Robin Frame has suggested could have run to hundreds of pounds a year.Footnote ⁵²

Art Óg was clearly an extremely wealthy man. Bardic poetry composed for Art makes much of the gold that was apparently on offer at his court, saying pointedly that Art received his “tax” (cíoschána) in gold (and not cattle), paid for his poems in gold, and gave alms in the form of gold coins.Footnote ⁵³ Whether this refers to the money collected from English communities or Art’s own tenants and clients is unclear. Whatever the case, Art seems to have spent his wealth liberally. His horse alone was apparently worth over 400 cows, and he also spent lavishly on a jewel-encrusted shrine for the Book of Moling.Footnote ⁵⁴ More sinister was the 1376 bounty he placed on Richard Wade of Carlow. Wade had caused the death of Art’s predecessor Domhnall the previous year, and in revenge Art apparently promised over £66 to any Irishman or Englishman who would cut off Richard’s head and deliver it to him.Footnote ⁵⁵ However, a large proportion of Art’s wealth would undoubtedly have gone toward the hiring of mercenaries and the business of making war. According to Jehan Creton, the army he raised to face Richard in 1399 numbered some three thousand men, while twenty years prior he had led a similarly sized army of two thousand men on a rampage through northern Leinster.Footnote ⁵⁶ These would have incurred far from insubstantial costs and were comparable with what the justiciar could raise when a royal service was called.

Perhaps a more concrete piece of evidence for the transformation of economic power into military muscle might be the appearance of Gaelic men-at-arms (heavy cavalrymen mounted on armored warhorses) in the retinues of Gaelic leaders from Leinster who accompanied the justiciar on campaigns during the middle decades of the fourteenth century. While only appearing in small numbers, their rates of pay would tend to indicate that these cavalrymen were indeed the genuine article. In 1344, Ó Mordha accompanied the justiciar on a campaign in Munster. His retinue contained six men-at-arms, 178 hobelars, and one hundred footmen. For eighteen days’ service he was paid £66 6s., which works out exactly at the standard rates of pay for the Englishmen serving the justiciar,Footnote ⁵⁷ 12d. a day for a man-at-arms, 4d. for a hobelar, and 1d. for footmen.Footnote ⁵⁸ A decade later Ó Mordha can once again be found serving in the royal army, this time with four men-at-arms, sixty eight hobelars, and 108 footmen for which he was paid £32 2s. 8d.Footnote ⁵⁹ On both occasions other Leinster magnates, including Ó Tuathail and Mac Murchadha, can also be found serving the justiciar with similar contingents of men-at-arms and hobelars. These Gaelic cavalrymen were referred to as men-at-arms and paid as such, which would tend to indicate that when on the battlefield, they acted as men-at-arms. This would have required all of the costly accoutrements associated with heavy cavalrymen, including the famously expensive warhorse.Footnote ⁶⁰

By the time Richard II first arrived in Ireland in 1394, Art had become one of the most powerful magnates in the region. He controlled vast personal estates stretching from Leighlin Bridge to Ferns and exercised a hitherto unheard-of level of authority over both English and Irish communities in Leinster. He proved more than a match for the Butler Earls of Ormond in the process. The last time a Mac Murchadha had exercised so much power in Leinster had been in the days of Art’s infamous ancestor, Diarmaid Mac Murchadha (r. 1132–1171).Footnote ⁶¹

Limerick and Gaelic Thomond

While Art Óg Mac Murchadha Caomhánach’s domination of much of Leinster and his confrontations with Richard II are striking, the commercial relationships between the inhabitants of Waterford, New Ross, and Gaelic Leinster that underpinned his power are barely visible to us. Unfortunately, the more granular documents that might reveal the day-to-day interactions of the citizens of Waterford and their Irish neighbors have generally not survived the centuries that separate the 1300s from the present. However, the city of Limerick, located in the south-west of the island on the mouth of the River Shannon, and its Gaelic neighbors to the north offer a compelling companion case study to that of Waterford and the Irish of Leinster. Much more detailed evidence has managed to survive, including several wills preserved by the Arthur family of Limerick, which can offer an insight into how Limerick’s citizens interacted with the Irish of Thomond.

In 1391, the city received a similar license to that which New Ross would receive in 1403. It allowed them to engage in commerce with “all persons, both English and Irish, enemies and rebels, although they may be indicted or outlawed of various seditions, felonies and trespasses in the King’s court.”Footnote ⁶² This was, of course, merely a recognition of the status quo as it had existed in Limerick for the previous thirty or so years. In the period between 1376 and 1391 when the license was issued, at least twenty-four thousand hides were shipped overseas from Limerick’s port.Footnote ⁶³ While these are substantial numbers in their own right, it also seems likely that significantly more hides left Limerick in this period than the amount mentioned above. In many respects, that records of these hides survive is an accident of fate, as they only appear in English records when the ships carrying them were forced to divert from their intended destinations to ports in England. There, owners were required to produce proof that the ships had already been customed in Limerick. Therefore, it seems almost certain that many ships made entirely unremarkable voyages and thus failed to leave evidence of their passing in any English records. Some shipments could have been extremely large. In 1381, John Toky, also known as John Banbury (d. 1404), famously shipped thirteen thousand hides in a single cargo.Footnote ⁶⁴ Such a large cargo is indicative of the scale of the operation of merchants such as Banbury, with a cargo of that scale likely requiring processing and storage facilities along with extensive networks of producers in the countryside. Both the quantities and the number of shipments indicate that Limerick was an established commercial node in the international hide trade between Ireland, England, and European ports.

Place name evidence also supports the centrality of the hide trade to medieval Limerick’s economy. From the thirteenth century, the Cistercian foundation at Monasternenagh (Mainister an Aonaigh) owned land on the North Bank of the Shannon, enclosed by the city walls with the name Polmanath (signed over to David Long in the 1230s), which, according to Catherine Swift, should be understood as referring to the tanning pits used by leather workers.Footnote ⁶⁵ If this is the case, then Limerick also appears to have had the infrastructure to process the hides that appear in fourteenth-century records. Limerick’s hinterland, which included Gaelic Thomond, must have been the ultimate origin of many of the hides that ended up in continental ports during the later fourteenth century. The implication is, of course, that the economy of Gaelic Thomond was deeply connected to international markets, producing surpluses of hides directly for export, indicating a remarkable degree of commercialization and specialization in the region.

Alongside the cargos of hides enumerated in Chancery documents and various port books, the evidence emanating from both the city of Limerick and Gaelic Thomond supports this conclusion. The evidence for commercial interactions between English townsmen and their Irish neighbors is unusually rich, which allows for a far more granular examination of the interactions between the two groups than can be done for Waterford. In particular, several wills belonging to various members of the Arthur family, one of the great merchant families of the city, have survived from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries (Table 1).Footnote ⁶⁶ This collection constitutes a vital resource for the study of Limerick during this period for which other documentation is sorely lacking. The wills make connections between Gaelic Thomond and merchants such as the Arthurs immediately apparent. They record a myriad of Gaelic names as both debtors, creditors, and beneficiaries of the deceased. Upon his death, Martin Arthur (d. 1376) was owed £3 4s. 8d. by the son of the “Dean O Molcorkyr,” “Thomas O Dwyl” owed him one mark (13s. 4d.) and “Donagh mac Lorcam” owed him 18d. On the other hand, Martin owed “Donnog O Cleryn” 40d., “Patritius O Breyn” 2s., and “Willielimus O Dusaine” 6s.Footnote ⁶⁷ Martin’s son John (d. 1425) owed “Dermitius O Deghe” 22s. on his death and was owed 12d. by “Donald O Conyn” and 4s. 2d. by “David O Horogho.”Footnote ⁶⁸ The will of John’s son, Thomas (d. 1426), who died the following year, continues this pattern, though with inclusion of names associated with the ruling dynasties of Thomond such as “Thadius O Bryen,” “Maccon Mac Conmarra,” and “Syda Cam Mac Conmarra.”Footnote ⁶⁹ Of course, not every person with an Irish surname named in the wills may have resided in territory under direct Irish lordship; some may have lived in the town itself or in country Limerick.Footnote ⁷⁰ Men such as Tomás Ó Maoil Choircre (Thomas son of the Dean O Molcorkyr) likely were residents of county Limerick. Indeed, Gerald Ó Maoil Choircre, who was almost certainly the father of Tomás, was one of the collectors of a parliamentary subsidy raised to pay for the war against Brian Sreamagh Ó Briain in 1375.Footnote ⁷¹ However, cumulatively, these wills demonstrate continuous and extensive economic interactions between the Gaelic inhabitants of Limerick’s hinterland and its merchant elite.

Table 1.

People with Irish names recorded in the wills of the Arthur family of Limerick (1376–1426)

Table 1 Long description

Columns give recorded name, notes on standardized name form, role, and amount. Debtors include O Molcorkyr, Thomas son of the Dean, 3 pounds 4 shillings 8 pence; O Dwyl, Thomas, 13 shillings 4 pence; Kylmoheyn, Sawe wife of, 6 shillings; Mac Lorcam, Donnogh, 18 pence; Willielimus oge, 19 pence; O Moalhaine, Jacobus, 5 shillings; O Hanrechaine, Teig roe, 1 crannock oats and 40 pence; O Horogho David, 4 shillings 2 pence; O Conyn, Donaldus, 12 pence; O Kally, Thomas, 2 pounds 13 shillings; O Breyn, Thadeus, 13 pounds 6 shillings 8 pence; Mac Conmarra, Maccon, 7 pounds 15 shillings; Inybren, Fynola, 5 pounds 6 shillings 8 pence; Iny Mac Conaurra, Fynola wife of Loghlyn mac conmary, 2 pounds; Mac Imerdy, Eg Cam mac Conycor, 32 shillings 2 pence; Macconmara, Syda Cam son of Mac Conmary, 7 shillings 4 pence; Mac Conmary, Johannes mac Mahona mac Teyg mac Rory, a cloth; and Mac Neclery, Gyly Jay, 2 pounds 13 shillings 4 pence. Creditors include O Cleryn, Donnog, 40 pence; O Breyn, Patritius, 2 shillings; O Dusaine, Willielimus, 6 shillings; O Deghe, Dermitius, 22 shillings; Mac Concroyth, Donaldus Du, 11 shillings; O Hogan, Loghlyn, 36 shillings 8 pence; O Geran, Cornelius, 15 shillings; Yny Loghlyn, Syllanyth, 14 shillings 4 pence; Mac Gyrrenayst, Nemero, 11 pounds 6 shillings 8 pence; O Karran, David, 13 shillings 4 pence; Iny Donyll, Isolde, 2 shillings 4 pence; O Mulrylly, Thomas, 8 pence; Donald Ard, 9 pence; and Ikally, Son of Donatius, 9 pence. Beneficiaries include O Cormacaine, Mauritius, 40 pence; O Cullane Ricardus, 12 pence; O Mayli, Johannes, 12 pence; O Gallan, Oyn, 3 shillings 4 pence; O Mayr, Edmundus, 2 shillings; O Barryth, Cornelius, 10 shillings; and O Lehyrnan, Philip, 20 pence.

For the most part, debts associated with Gaelic Irish names are rendered in monetary terms, that is pounds, shillings, and pence. However, this is not merely an accounting practice. Elsewhere in the wills, debts are also enumerated in terms of crannocks of wheat, oats, and barley and may point to the monetization of sections of Gaelic Thomond’s economy.Footnote ⁷² The appearance of people with Gaelic names as both creditors and debtors also indicates that the Arthurs were offering advance contracts to men such as “Thadeus O Bryen” for goods not yet supplied by the death of the testator, in this case Thomas Arthur, or that they were acting as bankers, from whom the Uí Bhriain and the Meic Conmara were borrowing money.

The comfort of the elite of Gaelic Thomond in using money is also reflected in a rental originating from the Mac Conmara lordship of Clann Chuilléin in the 1380s.Footnote ⁷³ This rental, which stems from the rule of Maccon Mac Conmara (d. 1397), is recorded entirely in ounces of silver and gold or marks and groats, though the latter represent only a fraction of the total rent collected by Mac Conmara, as the majority was recorded in ounces of silver. The total yearly rent collected from Mac Conmara’s lands amounted to three ounces of gold, 892 ounces of silver, half a mark, and one groat.Footnote ⁷⁴ Although the rental is mainly concerned with ounces of silver, it seems likely that most of his tenants would have paid this in coins of various denominations, which, when assessed for their silver content, would have amounted to the quantity of silver specified for each territory in the rental. By collecting in ounces of silver and not specific amounts of money, Mac Conmara was in a large part protecting himself from the extremely poor state of the Irish money supply during the late fourteenth century. Many coins were savagely clipped; thus by making his tenants pay in ounces rather than a set number of pounds, shillings, or pence, he could overcome this issue.Footnote ⁷⁵ That silver coins were circulating regularly in Thomond during Maccon’s reign is confirmed by mortgage agreements from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries such as that made between “Diarmaid and Seán óg the sons of Seán son of Dabhidh Cregan” and the “heirs of Donnchadh Mac Evoy,” which states that the mortgage could only be redeemed in “coined silver or dry stock.”Footnote ⁷⁶

The archaeological evidence from Thomond would also tend to support the widespread use of coins in the kingdom during the later Middle Ages. At least eight coin hoards have been found in modern County Clare with coins dating ca. 1220–ca. 1450, with the majority of the hoards dating to after 1280 (see Table 2). The age of the coins found in these hoards validates many contemporary complaints that the coinage of Ireland was old, with many coins, even those found in later hoards, having been issued during the reigns of Edward I. This makes it difficult to assign dates to many hoards, especially those found in Ennis, Killaloe, and Barntick. While it is possible they were all buried in the 1280s (the decade in which they were minted), given the known state of Irish coinage in the later fourteenth century, it is likely that they remained in circulation long after they were struck. Even those that have been assigned a later date may actually have been buried later than initially thought.

The hoards also contain significant amounts of foreign coinage, especially coins struck by Alexander III of Scotland (r. 1249–1286), which appeared in four out of the eight hoards (see Table 2). Perhaps the hoard most interesting for our purpose was that found near Kilfenora in 1872 containing some 500 coins. This hoard contained coins of Edward I, Edward II, Edward III, and Alexander III. The deposition of the hoard has been dated to after 1344 by an Edward III Florin coinage penny of York.Footnote ⁷⁷ More intriguingly, the hoard also contained some continental sterlings, which, it has been suggested, were struck by either Bishop Enguerrand de Crequi of Combrai (d. 1286) and/or Archbishop Heinrich von Wirnenburg of Cologne (d. 1332).Footnote ⁷⁸ The prevalence of international coinage would have further induced the lords of Thomond to assess payments by weight and silver content rather than by the nominal value of a coin as it allowed for the easy use of continental and Scottish coins, which tended to have much more variable silver content. Additionally, their presence in a fourteenth century hoard further connects Gaelic Thomond to international and continental markets.

The wills also make clear that dense credit networks spanned the Shannon, stretching up and down the social ladder. The wills name several individuals with surnames that seem to reflect the social hierarchy of medieval Thomond, indicating the wide-ranging interactions the Arthurs had with their Irish neighbors (see Table 1). The Uí Loirgneáin (O Lehyrnan), Uí Ghéaráin (O Geran), and Uí Mheidhir (O Mayr) were all relatively minor Thomond families, while the Uí Dheaghaidh (O Degh) were minor nobles in central Thomond. The Meic Conmara (Mac Conmarra) were, as we have seen, the lords of the Clann Chuilléin while the Uí Bhriain (O Breyn), as the kings of Thomond, stood at the apex of Gaelic society in the region. In particular, “Thadeus O Bryen” and “Maccon Mac Conmarra” were almost

Table 2.

Coin hoards found in Co. Clare dating from ca. 1220–ca. 1450Footnote ⁷⁹

Table 2 Long description

Locations are listed with amount, earliest deposition date, and type details describing latest coin information or issuing authorities. Corofin lists 1,080 coins with earliest deposition date 1220 to 25, and type notes a latest coin of Henry III class 7a, Iohan at Canterbury, with coins issued by Henry II, Henry III, and several Anglo Irish John issues including John de Courcy. Ennis appears twice: 36 coins with earliest deposition date 1250 and coins issued by William I posthumous, Alex. II, and Alexander III; and 150 coins with earliest deposition date 1280 and coins issued by Alexander III. Clondegad lists 5 coins with earliest deposition date 1260 and coins issued by Henry III Long Cross and undifferentiated continental sterlings. Killaloe lists 12 coins with earliest deposition date 1280 and coins issued by Alexander III. Barntick lists 25 coins with earliest deposition date 1285 and coins issued by Edward I or II undifferentiated and Edward III. Muckinish lists an unknown amount with earliest deposition date 1316 and type, Edward I or II undifferentiated. Kilfenora lists 500 coins with earliest deposition date 1344 and type notes a latest coin of an Edward III Florin coinage penny of York, with coins issued by Edward I to III undifferentiated, Alexander III, Anglo Irish Edward I, and undifferentiated continental sterlings. Kilmurry lists an unknown amount with earliest deposition date 1450 and coins issued by Henry VI undifferentiated.

certainly Tadhg mac Bhriain Uí Bhriain, king of Thomond (r. 1426–1438) and Maccon mac Síoda Meic Conmara, lord of Clann Chuilléin (d.1428). Their debts are significantly higher in value than those that had accompanied Gaelic names prior to this: 20 marks and 8 marks, 8s. and 4d., respectively. “Syda Cam Mac Conmarra” was almost certainly the Síoda Cam Mac Conmara, lord of Clann Chuilléin (d. 1444), who, along with his father, Maccon, was involved in the construction of the great friary at Quin.Footnote ⁸⁰

During this period construction was also begun on the impressive Mac Conmara castle at Bunratty, the only slightly less impressive Mac Conmara fortress at Dangan Ivaggin near Quin having been built in the late fourteenth century. A similar building campaign seems to have swept Limerick during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, with the construction of a stone bridge connecting King’s Island to the mainland and a variety of fortifications and defensive structures, some of which were built by merchants based in Bristol such as Thomas Balbeyn (d. 1402).Footnote ⁸¹

Thomas also seems to have been deeply involved in the local hide trade. At the time of his death, he was in possession of 2 lasts and 8 dickers of hides, 480 hides in total, which, given the scale of his connections with the Uí Bhriain and the Meic Conmara, might well have had their origins across the river in Thomond.Footnote ⁸² Thomas seems likely to have acted as something of a middleman for the English merchants who appear in the customs accounts and the Gaelic producers in the countryside, in the process forming the personal connections with Gaelic magnates that can be seen in his will. The change in status among the Gaelic debtors and creditors between the will of Martin Arthur and that of Thomas Arthur may be attributed to the change in status of the Arthurs themselves. Thomas had been elected mayor by the time of his death, while his grandfather seems to have been a relatively minor merchant. Some historians have suspected that trade between the English and Gaelic Irish operated by barter; however, the cross-cultural credit networks revealed by the Arthur wills, combined with the Gaelic evidence, would indicate that there was also substantial monetization in certain areas of Gaelic Ireland.Footnote ⁸³

The Uí Bhriain and their Meic Conmara vassals transformed this wealth into considerable military capacity, which the Uí Bhriain directed at recovering their influence east and south of the Shannon. Brian Sreamach Ó Briain was also sometimes known as Brian Catha an Aonaigh, an epithet that stems from his famous victory over the Earl of Desmond at Monasternenagh in July 1370.Footnote ⁸⁴ Brian’s campaign seems to have begun in January 1369 and culminated over a year later with the battle of Monasternenagh. With a considerable number of soldiers, Brian crossed the Shannon and set about raiding county Limerick, causing widespread devastation in the county. Initially he faced the professional soldiers of the retinue of Stephen Lawless, bishop of Limerick and later Meath, numbering between 200 and 300 “men at arms, hobelars and archers,” supported by the forces of local notables such as Patrick Fox, Henry Berkeley, and Sir Thomas Clifford, sheriff of Limerick.Footnote ⁸⁵ However, when it became clear that these forces were inadequate to contain the Uí Bhriain excursion, Gerald fitz Maurice, the Earl of Desmond (d. 1398), came north with a substantial army to deal with Ó Briain once and for all. The two armies met on the plain of the River Maigue near the Cistercian abbey of Monasternenagh where Desmond’s forces were routed and the earl captured by Brian, whom he held for eighteen months before ransoming him.Footnote ⁸⁶ Thereafter the victorious army marched north and captured Limerick city, where Brian installed Síoda Mac Conmara as governor.Footnote ⁸⁷

Monasternenagh may have possessed significance beyond what the rather terse annalistic account of the battle might imply. The Cistercian abbey there had been founded by Brian Ó Briain’s ancestor, Toirdelbhach Ua Briain (r. 1142–1165), in the twelfth century. Catherine Swift has proposed that the foundation of the abbey was intended both to give thanks for Toirdelbach’s survival of the great battle of Móin Mhór (1151) and to stabilize the southern border of his kingdom with that of Desmond.Footnote ⁸⁸ However, as has been mentioned above, the abbey, at least in the thirteenth century, appears to have been deeply involved in the hide trade, continuing its involvement therein even after it had divested itself of its land inside the city. As such, it may be the case that there was more strategy to Brian Ó Briain’s 1369 campaign than has previously been thought. He may have been looking both to reestablish the kingdom of Limerick enjoyed by his ancestors while also attempting to bring important nodes in the local hide trade back under his control.

Whatever the case, his successes drew the attention of the new justiciar, Sir William Windsor (d. 1384), who thereafter bent his considerable skills as a soldier toward attempting to dislodge Brian from the kingship, a task he would ultimately fail to complete during his six years in Ireland.Footnote ⁸⁹ However, Windsor, like Ufford in 1344, seems to have been well aware of the importance of international commerce to the Uí Bhriain and the Meic Conmara. Perhaps in an attempt to cut them off from their sources of revenue, one of Windsor’s first acts was to order the arrest of all shipping at Limerick, or as Otway-Ruthven speculated, in the Shannon estuary as a whole.Footnote ⁹⁰ Despite Windsor’s skills as a soldier, Brian continually managed to frustrate him, and his heavy-handed approach to war finance earned him the animosity of many of the English of Munster. By the time he returned to England, Windsor was no doubt glad to be shot of both the Irish and English of Ireland. Following Windsor’s departure Brian renewed his campaign across the Shannon. He continually raided the south and east banks of the Shannon, destroying Adare and Kilmallock in the process.Footnote ⁹¹ In 1382, following the death of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March (d. 1381), it was reported to the justiciar that Brian, with an “excessive force of enemies and rebels sought to make a general conquest in counties Limerick, Kerry and Cork.”Footnote ⁹² On hearing of Brian’s approach, the Earl of Desmond was once again sent north by the justiciar to deal with him. Desmond seems to have fared only marginally better than he had twelve years earlier as a royal service was proclaimed against Brian only two years later, resulting in an expedition that predictably failed to achieve any results.Footnote ⁹³ The ineffectiveness of Windsor and Desmond in dealing militarily with the Ó Briain threat left Brian and his successor, Conchobhar, as the premier magnates in the south-west. By the fifteenth century, Realpolitik had forced Desmond to accept this fact. The earl accepted territorial concessions and sought peace with the Uí Bhriain through marriage and fosterage.Footnote ⁹⁴

Brian’s eldest son, Tadhg Ó Briain, named in Thomas Arthur’s will as owing 20 marks, had a career that was only slightly less turbulent than that of his father. By 1407, nearly twenty years before he would assume the kingship of Thomond, he was already being heralded as the “grettest rebell of all Mownester.”Footnote ⁹⁵ Even prior to his accession to the kingship of Thomond, Tadhg seems to have possessed considerable military resources. In 1419, he intervened in Connacht with an army comprising the “Clann Chuilléin, Clann Inghine Uí hAnrathain, two great battalions of foot soldiers and Domhnall Mac Suibhne with his gallowglass” (Clann Culen & clann ingine h. Anrathain da corugad commoro do choisigib & Domnall Mac Subne cona galloclachaib).Footnote ⁹⁶ Domhnall Mac Suibhne’s gallowglass and the “two great battalions of foot soldiers” were almost certainly expensive professional soldiers. As Tadhg would not accede to the kingship for seven years, it seems likely that he was paying them out from the revenues of his own estates rather than those of the kingdom of Thomond. One also wonders, in light of his 20 mark debt to Thomas Arthur, if Tadhg was in the habit of borrowing from the Arthurs (and others like them) in order to finance his military endeavors.

In 1366, the statutes of Kilkenny attempted to ban all Englishmen from selling to the Irish “any kind of provisions in a time of war” (ne nul maner de vittaile en tempts de guerre) lest they be judged “a traitor to our Lord the King” (come traitour nostre Seignour le Roy).Footnote ⁹⁷ Just under a century later, the Irish Parliament issued a general license to Limerick, Cork, Waterford, and Youghal, which stated that the citizens of those towns “may lawfully buy and sell all manner of merchandise from and to Irishmen, without any hurt or hindrance of our sovereign lord the King.”Footnote ⁹⁸ While on the surface, the Irish Parliament seems, by 1464, to have abandoned the spirit of the statutes of Kilkenny, their actions were merely the logical development of those of Prince Lionel when he first enacted the statutes of Kilkenny. In comparison to the far-reaching legislation aimed at halting the advancing acculturation of the English colonists in Ireland, the limitations on trade with the Irish were relatively minor. The statutes made no attempt to halt general trade with the Irish; they merely sought to try and limit the sale of direct military equipment (horses and armor) during peace or war and to cut the Irish off from the economy of the colony during times of active warfare. They did not seek to limit all trade with the Irish in the same way they attempted to limit intermarriage and fosterage. While in theory Lionel may have wished to sever the Irish from the colonial economy, in practice this was hardly feasible. Even by this early date, as a fifteenth-century petition would later claim, “the profit of every market, city and town” surely depended “principally on the resort of Irish people bringing their merchandise to the said cities and towns.”Footnote ⁹⁹ By omission, the most strident piece of anti-Irish legislation of the fourteenth century recognized the paradoxical nature of the English colonial economy in Ireland. The Irish were already too central a component to remove, even if it strengthened them to the extent that the English could fear that the colony was “at the point of being lost, if remedy and help are not immediately supplied.”Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Wales and Ireland in the Later Fourteenth Century

Across the Irish Sea, the usurpation of Richard II by Henry Bolingbroke (r. 1399–1413) seems to have heralded even more political turbulence than Richard’s already tumultuous reign had brought to the British mainland. Within a year Wales would be in revolt and Henry IV’s new kingdom would appear to be teetering on the brink of financial and political collapse. Owain Glyndŵr’s assumption of the title of Prince of Wales (r. 1400–1416) set the country ablaze in a conflagration that Henry, at least initially, found difficult to contain. It can hardly be a coincidence that Glyndŵr’s rising came only a year after Art Mac Murchadha Caomhánach humiliated a king of England in the field.Footnote ¹⁰¹ There were of course many differences between Glyndŵr’s rebellion and Richard’s expeditions to Ireland, yet Glyndŵr seems to have considered Gaelic Ireland as a place where sorely needed manpower and military expertise might be found, and where a comparable struggle against the English was taking place. R. R. Davies characterized Glyndŵr’s appeals to the Irish as the least hopeful of his diplomatic efforts, citing the political disunity of the Gaelic lords.Footnote ¹⁰² However, that Glyndŵr could, in the same breath, connect the Irish and Welsh struggles against the oppressive English and at the same time request military aid, only indicates the power and prestige possessed by the kings of Ireland by the beginning of the fifteenth century.Footnote ¹⁰³ In this regard, it is significant that Glyndŵr was not seeking a sympathetic rising of the Irish against their common enemy but was specifically requesting that the Irish kings send “their armed horsemen and footmen” (de equestribus et peditatibus vestris armatis) to his aid, a statement reminiscent of the many appeals sent by the English of Ireland to the Crown in the face of the rising Irish tide.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

On the other hand, as R. R. Davies has emphasized, Glyndŵr’s forces were chronically short of arms, victuals, and money throughout the war, despite the capture of a few choice ransoms such as that of Lord Grey of Ruthin.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Unlike the Irish, who, according to the Dublin government, were “much advanced and strengthened as well in victuals and harness as divers other necessaries” due to their interactions with English and continental merchants, Glyndŵr had few options when it came to pursuing the commercial relationships that might have funded his long-term ambitions for an independent Wales.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ The failure of Glyndŵr to win support in any major Welsh towns, particularly those of the south coast whose strong connections with Bristol gave them an international market for their produce, may have seriously hampered his war effort. Indeed, the treatment of the towns at the hands of Glyndŵr’s men may have alienated the very men whose commercial connections with cities such as Bristol and beyond would have proven vital in sustaining the effort against the English Crown in the long term. During the course of Glyndŵr’s rising, more than forty Welsh towns were burned or sacked by his partisans.Footnote ¹⁰⁷

One example will suffice to illustrate this point. In August 1403, Henry Don, one of Glyndŵr’s followers, laid siege to the town and castle of Kidwelly in south-west Wales. Local burgesses such as John ap Owen, John Ailward, and John Don, instead of siding with Henry Don, withdrew to the castle to withstand the siege. Men such as Owen, who it is important to note bore a Welsh name, were rich, especially in comparison to Glyndŵr himself. Owen, the richest man in Kidwelly, held some of the most lucrative leases in the local area and exported as many as fifty sacks of wool a year through Bristol (worth about £450).Footnote ¹⁰⁸ In terms of wealth and international connection, burgesses in south Wales such as John ap Owen and his compatriots John Ailward or Thomas Rede of Carmarthen (who, along with another man, raised £400 for the defense of the town), stood head and shoulders above the uchelwyr (the native Welsh gentry) of northern Wales and were not, as a rule, sympathetic to their cause.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

In contrast, the feelings of the merchants of Limerick and Bristol with regard to their Irish neighbors seem not to have mattered greatly when it came to their ability to engage them in trade, which continued to flow despite the ongoing campaigns of Brian Ó Briain south of the Shannon. Indeed, due to the fact that by 1381 Ó Briain had been rampaging through county Limerick for the better part of a year, it is all but certain that the John Banbury mentioned above must have acquired much of his 1381 cargo from Irish producers in Thomond. He moved in the same circles as the Arthurs, with both the Banbury and the Arthur families providing several mayors of the city across the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Banbury, who would eventually serve as mayor of Bristol, would have had his own network of Irish and Englishmen, similar to those made manifest in the Arthur wills, from which he would have collected the hides that seemed to make up such a large part of his business.Footnote ¹¹¹ The Arthurs stand as the embodiment of the integration between Gaelic Ireland and the commercial structures of the English empire. While Thomas Arthur was advancing considerable sums to the elite of Gaelic Thomond, his son Nicholas (d. 1475) was acting as a privateer on behalf of the English Crown, having received a license in 1430 to recover the £5,332 13s. 4d. worth of property he had lost to men serving the Duke of Britanny four years earlier.Footnote ¹¹² For many merchants, such as Banbury or the Arthurs, their relationships with the Irish landowners and producers in the surrounding countryside were of paramount importance to their livelihoods. And so, when Ó Briain went to war, these relationships remained intact. Clearly the Uí Bhriain valued the relationship as well. The capture of Limerick in 1370 seems to have been an aberration in Brian Ó Briain’s policy as he made no effort to do so again, despite the fact that by the 1380s he was once again in untrammeled control of the southern bank of the Shannon, and Limerick was ripe for the taking. Indeed, it is striking that no Ó Briain king was to bring violence against the city until the reign of Tadhg an Chomhaid Ó Briain, nearly a century later.Footnote ¹¹³ As a result, the Uí Bhriain and their Meic Conmara vassals were wealthy enough to emulate the Uí Bhroin in Leinster and threaten to hire away soldiers serving the royal government’s agenda in Munster.Footnote ¹¹⁴

The support of English merchants, both those based in Ireland and those based in English cities such as Bristol, was essential in creating the economic capacity that allowed Irish kings in southern Ireland to oppose the ambitions of their English counterpart. In the fourteenth century, these connections with English mercantile networks allowed the Uí Bhriain and the Meic Mhurchadha to take advantage of the post-plague boom occurring in parts of the continent and turn that wealth into military capacity and thus political power. Due to the limitations of the sources, it is impossible to track the monetary chain exactly from hide to hired soldier. However, the flourishing monetized military economy combined with the manifestation of Irish military force strongly indicates that Irish leaders required specie in order to finance their military pursuits, specie that they acquired through interaction with the colonial economy. Of course, English magnates such as the earls of Desmond and Ormond were also beneficiaries of the post-plague economic environment. However, in comparison to the colonial economy of the thirteenth century, which had relied largely on the export of grain and wool, and from which the Irish had to a great extent been excluded, the emergence of the hide trade as a central part of the Irish economy placed the economic fortunes of Irish rulers on a far more even footing with their English counterparts. As such, the Gaelic recovery of the fourteenth century should perhaps be understood as a transformation in the economic capacity of Gaelic Ireland rather than as a purely military or political development. The larger implication is that capable native leaders could use the very colonial structures that impinged on their independence in order to generate the capacity for effective resistance. Therefore, that leaders from these areas could continually pose serious military threats to the ambitions of the king of England and his ministers should come as no surprise. After all, as Cicero has it, “the sinews of war are infinite money” (Nervos belli, pecuniam infinitam).Footnote ¹¹⁵