Bannow
manor in medieval Wexford
Niall
C.E.J. O’Brien
Bannow Bay and the lost medieval town of Bannow lies
along the south-west coast of Co. Wexford. The Irish name for Bannow Bay is
Cuan an Bhainbh which means the ‘harbour of the sucking pigs’.[1] It
was into this modern quiet inlet of the sea that many a seaborne invader came
such as the Vikings and the Anglo-Normans and possibly other invaders long
before the Viking age. These early people left traces of settlement in the
Bannow area in the Bronze Age where a mixture of tillage and livestock farming
was carried out.[2]
This article attempts to collect something of the history of the medieval manor
at Bannow from those far off times.
Bannow
in pre-Viking times
In the days before Christianity was brought to
Ireland the important people of the Bannow area ruled their district with
firmness but they also embraced the new inventions. One of the most significant
of these inventions was writing and Bannow and the surrounding areas possess
examples of the Ogham alphabet. Into this pre-Christian society came a new
religion which changed the face of Bannow and the country.[3]
Just as the invasions of the Vikings and the Normans
cause change that brought conflict as all change brings conflict, the coming of
Christianity brought conflict. County Wexford was one of the four areas of
Ireland which experience the winds of change brought by Christianity before the
time of St. Patrick. In order to impose the new religion on the people some
missionaries came to Bannow and erased the pagan god’s name from the Ogham
stone there standing.
At the time of the Protestant reformation in the
sixteenth century it was the influence of the local landlord which had an
important bearing on the religion of the ordinary people. In the fifth century
the landlords of Bannow also had such influence. Maybe some of these local
strong men were removed to make way for landlords more favourable to the new
religion. It was likely that one of these landlords sponsored the early
monastic site at Cullenstown. Whatever the circumstances of the change, the new
religion of Christianity established itself in Bannow, and in Ireland, and even
with all the changes of the Protestant reformation, most of the people of
Bannow held to the Christian religion as promoted by St. Brecaun and St. Ibar.[4]
In the seventh century a person called Robertach mac
Elgusa was princeps of Banba More. Robertach was of the Ui Bairrche people who
gave their name to the cantred of Bargy in which Bannow forms the western
point.[5]
Bannow
in Viking times
Around Bannow Bay are a cluster of Norse place names
suggesting Norse settlement. The townland of Arklow at the head of the Bay
comes from the Norse personal name of Arkill or Arnkell with the word lo
meaning a swampy or low-lying meadow. Even today the townland adjoins the
marshy valley of the Owenduff River. A Viking silver hoard discovered at
Blackcastle near Clonmines, at the head of the Bay, consisted of seventeen
silver ingots and coupled with silver deposits on the eastern shore of Bannow
Bay show the importance of the area to the Vikings. Silver was an important
ingredient in the expanding trade of the tenth century.[6]
The Viking settlement at Bannow was not an isolate
one but part of a wider area of Viking settlement. The eastern and western
points of this wider area were controlled by the Viking towns of Waterford and
Wexford. In between much of the baronies of Forth and Bargy were given over to
Viking rule. This control lasted some 300 years and in the early eleventh century
the Vikings of the south assumed control of the Uí Ceinnsealaigh kingdom of
north Wexford. There they remained unchallenged until Dermot McMurrough drove
back the Vikings into their port towns before he lost his own kingdom.[7]
Plaque to Norman invasion near Bannow
The
Normans come to Bannow
When Dermot McMurrough went to Wales and France
seeking help to recover his kingdom of Leinster the Normans he met saw beyond
restoration, they saw opportunity for themselves to carve out new estates –
some may even saw creation of a new Norman kingdom, independent of the Angevin
Empire.
When Robert Fitz Stephen set sail from Wales for
southern Ireland in 1169 his small band of about 600 soldiers. These soldiers
were composed of thirty knights, sixty men at arms and some three hundred
archers and foot soldiers.[8]
They had one minor problem – where to land. The
walled towns and major ports of Waterford and Wexford were in the hands of
Norsemen and independent of Dermot McMurrough. The sheltered bay of Bannow,
situated between the two Norse towns – divide and conquer – presented the
perfect place to beach the Norman light draught vessels. Once ashore, as every
good general will tell you, it is hard to dislodge a beachhead.[9]
Robert Fitz Stephen landed at Bannow on the first
day of May 1169 with three ships. On the following day Maurice de Prendergast
arrived with two more ships containing ten men-at-arms and a large body of
archers.[10]
Among the soldiers was Hervey de Montmorency as cousin and representative of
Richard de Clare (Strongbow), Earl of Pembroke.[11]
The Normans sent word of their arrival and Dermot
McMurrough came to meet them with joy. The two armies went first to take
Wexford town. After first putting up a brave defence the townsfolk decided with
their ships all burnt and no outside help in sight to surrender. In reward for
this victory Dermot McMurrough made a grant of the two cantreds of Bargy and
Forth to Hervey of Montmorency. Thus, Bannow Bay and the land which would
become the manor of Bannow, came under the authority of a new lord, a feudal
lord, Hervey de Montmorency.[12]
The conquest of Ireland would take over four centuries to complete but it would
not be reversed until 1922.
Hervey
de Montmorency
After the grant of the two southern cantreds of
Bargy and Forth, Hervey de Montmorency joined the large Fitzgerald clan by
marring Nesta, daughter of Maurice Fitzgerald. But this did nothing to win him
favour with the scribe par excellence of the Norman invasion, Giraldus
Cambrensis.[13]
Hervey de Montmorency was better connected with the
strong man of the Norman invasion, Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, as he
was uncle of Richard. It was Hervey de Montmorency who went to King Henry II in
1170 to declare the loyalty of Richard de Clare to the crown.[14] After
1176, with the death of Richard de Clare, Hervey de Montmorency seems to have
lost interest in his Irish property. In 1178 he made a substantial grant of
land in Co. Wexford to Buildwas abbey in Shropshire to found an abbey in
Ireland. The venture didn’t get off the ground and St. Mary’s abbey in Dublin
took over the project and founded Dunbrody abbey.[15] In
the course of time religious houses such as Tintern abbey and Selskar abbey
would own about half of the medieval parish of Bannow.[16]
In 1179 Hervey de Montmorency gave up secular life
and became a monk of Christ Church in Canterbury. Hervey gifted the Christ
Church many lands and churches in Ireland including Bannow. In 1245 Christ
Church sold the Irish property to Tintern abbey in Wexford for 625 marks and an
annual rent of 10 marks. Tintern was to maintain a chaplain at St. Brendan’s
chapel at Bannow to say annual prayers there for the soul of Hervey and other
benefactors.[17]
William
Marshal the elder
It would appear that the borough of Bannow was established
and granted privileges by Geoffrey Fitz Robert, seneschal of Leinster for
William Marshal.[18]
Although other evidence suggests that Hervey de Montmorency had founded the
town.[19]
The town was built on an island in Bannow Bay but now the island is no longer
as the shifting sands which buried the medieval town joined the island on its
eastern side to the mainland.[20]
In 1205 the estates of Hervey de Montmorency in Co.
Wexford fell escheated to William Marshal.[21] This
William Marshal was born in 1144 to a minor gentry family in Anglo-Norman
England. But it was in France, in the plains of Normandy that William Marshal
had his schooling and from where he went on to become the greatest knight in
medieval Europe. William Marshal served successive Plantagenet kings of England
and on the death of King John in 1217 William Marshal was made guardian of the
ten year old King Henry III. It was William Marshal who broke the back of the
French invasion of England and prevented Prince Louis of France from becoming
King of England.
In 1189 William Marshal married one of the greatest
heiress of her day, Isabella de Clare, daughter of Richard de Clare and Aoife,
daughter of Dermot McMurrough. By this marriage William Marshal became Earl of
Pembroke and Lord of Leinster. His Irish lands covered much of the modern
counties of Kilkenny, Carlow, Kildare, Offaly and Wexford.[22]
The
sons of William Marshal the elder
William Marshal the elder, Earl of Pembroke, left
five sons and five daughters at the time of his death. With five sons the
succession to the great Marshal inheritance in England, Wales, France and
Ireland seemed secure for generations. But by a strange twist of fate each of
the five sons died in succession without leaving any male heirs. William
Marshal the younger, Earl of Pembroke, died in leaving the King’s sister,
Eleanor as his widow. She subsequently married Simon de Montfort, Earl of
Leicester, and received £400 per year in name of her dower. The next Earl of Pembroke,
Richard Marshal died on 16th April 1234 after receiving severe
wounds in the Battle of the Curragh on 1st April.
The next brother Gilbert Marshal died in 1241
leaving Margaret of Scotland as his widow (she died in 1244). He was succeeded
by Walter Marshal who died on 24th November 1245 leaving Margaret,
Countess of Lincoln and Pembroke, as his widow and the whole of County Kildare
and land in Carlow and Laois as her dower. The last brother, Anselm Marshal,
died eleven days after his brother leaving Matilda de Bohun as his widow. She
subsequently married Roger de Quency, Earl of Winchester. Although Anselm
didn’t receive seisin of the Marshal lands, Matilda de Bohun was giving the old
and new town of Jerpoint as dower.[23]
Partition
of the Marshal lands 1247
After the last brother died in 1245 the great
Marshal inheritance fell to the five daughters of William Marshal the elder. Feudal
law said all the lands should pass to the eldest male heir. But if no male heir
was left the property was to be divided equally among the female heirs. All five daughters had married great English
lords and left issue. Two of the daughters left only female heirs, seven
co-heiresses and three co-heiresses respectively. Thus by feudal law the
Marshal lands were divided into five parts and of these two parts were divided
into seven and three parts. The dower lands of three widows also influenced the
division of the property.
St Mary's medieval church at Bannow
Joan
Marshal
County Wexford was given to the second daughter of
William Marshal the elder, Joan Marshal. She had married, after 1219, Warin de
Munchensi and was died by 1247 leaving her son John de Munchensi to inherit.
John died shortly after and his sister Joan (wife of William de Valence,
half-brother of the king) was on 13th August 1247 given seisin of
County Wexford. The manor of Bannow was included in the Wexford property (total
value £342 10s 2½d) and was worth £31 10d at the partition.[24]
William
de Valence
William de Valence and Joan de Munchensi had three
sons and four daughters. The eldest son, John de Valence died in 1277 and was
buried in Westminster Abbey beside his sister, Margaret. The second son,
William de Valence, was killed in battle in 1282 between Gilbert de Clare and
the Welsh near Llandeilo. The third son, Aymer de Valence would inherit Bannow
and Wexford.[25]
Joan
de Valence
After the death of her husband, Joan de Valence was
given a third part of her husband’s estate as her dower lands to support her in
her widowhood. Among the lands she received was Pembroke castle in Wales,
Inteberg manor in Worcester and Wexford castle in Ireland with seven other
manors there. Included in these manors was that of Bannow with the Isle of
Keirach. Joan also held the new town of Jerpoint in Co. Kilkenny. Joan de
Valence was succeeded by her son Aymer de Valence.[26]
Among the local people of Bannow to see the changes in the landlord was
possibly a knight named Colfer and his lady who’s memorial tomb at Bannow was
seen by Du Noyer in about 1834 and produced in the then Dublin Penny Journey.[27]
Aymer
de Valence
After the death of his mother in September 1307,
Aymer de Valence was regarded as Earl of Pembroke. In that year, the borough of
Bannow had about 160 burgages.[28]
Like medieval settlers in other places the people of Bannow were mostly
farmers, although some may have earned a living by fishing. In 1640 John
Hollywood of Tartaine, Co. Dublin, held £3 and the free fishing yearly out of
the burgage plots of Bannow.[29]
Each medieval farmer had a small plot of land to
grow food for his family while his main occupation was to help his neighbours
in farming the three large open fields of the medieval manor. Most of these
farmers held their land in return for labour service on the lord’s demesne
lands. These services included so many days harrowing, ploughing, weeding,
cutting the corn and threshing it. Other people took care of the animals such
as the oxen for ploughing and pulling the heavy carts, sheep, pigs and other
cattle.
In 1319 Patrick Cosyn was vicar of Bannow and
collector of the Parliamentary Subsidy in the area. He was still vicar in 1339.
The church of St. Mary in which he preached consisted of a nave and chancel
with two side chapels.[30]
One of these side chapels could have been the chapel of St. Brendan where
Tintern abbey maintained a chaplain to say prayers for the soul of Hervey de
Montmorency.[31]
The parishioners who heard those prayers were almost all new colonists in the
Bannow area. Such was the impact of the new Anglo-Norman settlement in the tow
cantreds of Forth and Bargy that the original Irish peoples simply disappeared.
The Welsh, English, French, Flemish and others from Europe who settled in the
area gave the place a unique language and culture which survived until the end
of the eighteenth century and in some pockets until the start of the twentieth.[32]
Meanwhile Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke and
lord of Bannow, served King Edward II in England, France and Gascony as he had
served the King’s father in many campaigns against the Scots. In 1306 Aymer de
Valence was made Guardian of Scotland and in 1307 captured the wife and brother
of Robert the Bruce, the King of Scotland.[33]
Aymer de Valence died in June 1324 while on an
embassy in France. His remains were brought back to England and he was given
the honour of burial in Westminster Abbey. His widow survived him for over 50
years and founded Pembroke College, Cambridge.[34]
On 26th July 1324 an inquisition post
mortem was made concerning the property of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke,
in parts of Co. Wexford. The jury found that Aymer held manor of Bannow (Banua)
among other extensive lands in Wexford. At Bannow there was a hall, and a
grange roofed with straw. But the condition of the buildings was not good as
the jury described them as ‘almost prostrate’.
The manor of Bannow also had a water mill and earned
money from the perquisites of the hundred court in the town of Bannow.[35] The
rent of the burgages attached to the town of Bannow was then calculated as £8
0s 10d.[36]
There was also land held in demesne and land rented
by tenants at Carrykmax, Rodanmactyr, the town of Moycrohry and Ethergaul. Also
attached to the manor were a number of free tenancies. At Rosmyl Reymond de
Barry held one carucate of land; Adam Keating held one carucate at Coulussyl
and Wolfram Deverous held another carucate in the same place; and at Coulneth
and Coulnerath the heirs of William Minax held one and a half carucates.[37]
The land of Bannow was used for tillage and pasturing animals. There was also
forestry in the area for the pigs and to provide building materials.[38]
Medieval graves at Bannow
Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, held land also
in Co. Kilkenny, extensive lands in South Wales, and other estates in such
English counties as Gloucester, Dorset, Hereford, Worcester, Norfolk, Suffolk,
Buckingham and Hertford. Although twice married, Aymer de Valence left no
children to inherit. Instead Aymer de Valence was succeeded by three heirs:
John de Hastings (aged 30), Joan Comyn, Countess of Athol (aged 28), and
Elizabeth Comyn (aged 20).[39] John
Hastings was the son of John Hastings, 1st Lord Hastings and Isabel
de Valence, sister and co-heir of Aymer de Valence. John Hastings junior was
succeeded by his son Laurence de Hastings who in October 1339 was recognised as
11th Earl of Pembroke.[40]
John de Hastings acquired the larger share of the Pembroke estate through the
power of the Despenser family.
Joan and Elizabeth Comyn were the daughters of John
Comyn of Badenoch and Joan de Valence. John Comyn was murdered by Robert the
Bruce in February 1306 at the Greyfriars church in Dumfries.
Elizabeth
Comyn
Elizabeth Comyn had
inherited the manor of Bannow in Co. Wexford along with land at Jerpoint and
Everdrym. On 8th June 1428 a commission of inquiry was issued to
Henry Fortescue, James Cornewallys, Robert Folyng, Maurice Stafford, Walter
Whitey, William Lyncoll', John Gogh and Thomas Abbey, to established the
history of Bannow and the other properties and established who was the rightful
owner. The justices said that Elizabeth Comyn had the manor in fee.[41]
Elizabeth’s sister, Joan, married David Strathbogie,
Earl of Atholl, and acquired part of Co. Wexford including Ferns castle.[42]
Among the English properties inherited by Elizabeth
Comyn was the powerful stronghold of Goodrich castle. In the mid-1320s England
was controlled by the Marcher lords Hugh le Despenser the older and his son
Hugh Despenser the younger. The Despensers also controlled the King, Edward II.
Upon her inheritance, Hugh le Despenser the younger promptly kidnapped
Elizabeth Comyn in London and transported her to Herefordshire to be imprisoned
in her own castle at Goodrich. In April 1325, under threat over death,
Elizabeth Comyn was forced to sign over the castle and other lands to the
Despensers. She was also forced to sign a debt notice of £10,000.[43]
This kidnapping and forced surrender was of
significance for Elizabeth’s Irish property as Hugh le Despenser was lord of
Kilkenny and owner of Kilkenny castle.[44] Upon her release Elizabeth Comyn married Richard
Talbot, 2nd Baron Talbot, in order to secure protection. After the
invasion of England in 1326 by Queen Isabella and the defeat of the Despenser
family, Richard Talbot promptly seized Goodrich castle and in 1327 Elizabeth
was recognised as the legal owner.[45]
By her marriage with Richard Talbot she had a son, Gilbert Talbot, ancestor of
the later Earls of Shrewsbury and Waterford and Lords of Wexford. It was during
the time of Richard Talbot that the Black Death came to Ireland. Bannow, like
many other Anglo-Norman settlements suffered causalities but to what extent we
are unsure. After the death of Richard Talbot, Elizabeth Comyn married John
Bromwich.
John
Bromwich
With his marriage to
Elizabeth Comyn between 1358 and 1361 John Bromwich made his first acquaintance
with Ireland. Her marriage to Sir John Bromwich produced a daughter called Anna
who it seems died without issue. After Elizabeth Comyn died, John Bromwich held
Bannow by the law of England with a reversion, after his death, to Gilbert
Talbot, son and heir of Elizabeth Comyn.[46]
In about 1369 the land
of Bannow, Jerpoint and Everdrym were seized by the Irish government under the
Act of Absentees. This measure was introduced to force owners of estates, rents
and offices in Ireland, who lived overseas, to come and live in Ireland and
contribute to the defence of the country. Soon after the attorneys of John
Bromwich settled with the Irish government but still the lands were not
restored.[47]
On 13th May
1371 John Bromwich received pardon for not going to Ireland or sending troops
there as set out in the Act of Absentees. Elizabeth Comyn also didn’t send any
aid to Ireland. John Bromwich said that he was absent from Ireland because he
was in service of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, in Lombardy. Later he was in
service of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, in the wars in France and England.
The king pardoned John Bromwich and ordered William de Windsor to restore him
to his Irish lands and the reversion to Elizabeth Comyn.[48]
On 15th May
1371 John Bromwich appointed Henry Conway and Roger Colyn as his Irish
attorneys for one year.[49]
His Irish estate was still in government hands to the great loss of income for
John Bromwich and contrary to the royal patent he had received. John Bromwich sought
a remedy through his attorneys over the next few years. In 1374 he was finally
successful. On 28th October 1374, at Castledermot, an order was
issued to exonerate John Bromwich and to cause him to be quit of any fees as an
inspection of the rolls of chancery showed the King had entirely granted and
restored the estate to John Bromwich with all their issues and profits.[50]
On 26th June
1376 Sir John Bromwich appointed William Carlel and Roger Cullen as his Irish
attorneys for the succeeding two years as he stayed in England.[51]
For more on John Bromwich see = http://celtic2realms-medievalnews.blogspot.ie/2016/06/john-bromwich-justiciar-of-ireland_14.html
Bannow
in the fifteenth century
John Bromwich died
sometime before September 1388 when the manor of Bannow revered to the Talbot
family as Bromwich left no heirs by Elizabeth Comyn.[52]
Gilbert Talbot had succeeded his father Richard Talbot in 1356 as the 3rd
Baron Talbot. Gilbert Talbot served in Gascony in the Hundred Years War. Later
he was involved in military campaigns in Spain and Portugal. In 1352 he
married, as his first wife, Pernel, daughter of James Butler, 1st
Earl of Ormond by Eleanor, daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl
of Hereford and 3rd Earl of Essex by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of
King Edward the first.[53]
Gilbert Talbot died of
the pestilence in Spain in April 1387 and was succeeded by his son Richard
Talbot who in 1388 assumed ownership of Bannow and the other properties of his
grandmother, Elizabeth Comyn.[54] At
some unknown date, before 1387, Gilbert Talbot gave the reversion of Bannow to
Robert Evere and Ismania, his wife, and to the heirs of Robert forever. With
the death of John Bromwich, Robert Evere gained possession of Bannow along with
Jerpoint and Everdrym. After his death, Ismania married John Drakea and James Evere,
son and heir of Robert, confirmed the estate to John Drake and Ismania for
their lives. On 1st January 1420 Ismania Evere died and John Evere
(aged 50 years and more), and his wife, Alice Preston, were given full seisin.[55]
The
Talbot succession
Meanwhile in 1389,
Richard Talbot, 4th Baron Talbot was recognised as Lord of Wexford
on the death of John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke. Richard Talbot died in
September 1396 and was succeeded by his first son, Gilbert Talbot. This Gilbert
Talbot, Lord of Wexford, was at the siege of Caen in 1417 and led a successful
raid into the Cotentin before eventual defeat. He was later captain of Caen
castle and in October 1418 died at the siege of Rouen. Gilbert Talbot was at
first succeeded by his daughter, Ankaret but on her death in December 1421 the
lordship of Wexford descended on John Talbot, second son of Richard Talbot, 4th
Baron.[56]
John Talbot, 7th
Baron Talbot, was created Earl of Shrewsbury in 1442 and in 1446 was made Earl
of Waterford.[57]
John Talbot served in France and fought against Joan de Arc. In 1445 he was made
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. In 1449 he bravely defended Rouen against strong
opposition. In the 1450s he fought in Gascony in the last engagements of the
Hundred Years War and died in 1453 at Castillon.[58]
John Talbot was
succeeded by his son John Talbot, 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury. The second
Earl fought in France. Back home he was chancellor of Ireland and treasurer of
England among other jobs. In 1445 he married his cousin, Elizabeth, daughter of
James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond and died in July 1460 at the battle
of Northampton on the Lancastrian side.[59]
The 2nd Earl
of Shrewsbury was succeeded by his son, John Talbot, 3rd Earl of
Shrewsbury and Waterford and Lord of Wexford. The 3rd Earl died in
1473 and was succeeded by his son George Talbot who in 1475 got seisin of his
father’s estates in England, Wales and Ireland. In May 1536 George Talbot lost
his Irish estates under the Act of Absentees and died in 1539 having acquired
some estates in England as compensation.[60]
Interestingly, and not
of great help for this article, the survey of the Irish lands of the Earl of
Shrewsbury fails to mention Bannow. Among the places in the survey were the
manors of Rosslare, Ballymore, Balmaskellers (Ballynasculloge), Bargy, Kildowan
(Kildavin) and the villa of Wexford.[61]
But from other evidence we know that the Earl of Shrewsbury held Bannow and the
area around it. In March 1598 John Prendergast of Gurgines (Gortins), Co.
Wexford held at the time of death various properties including one burgage plot
in Bannow which was formerly held of the Earl of Shrewsbury at 6d per annum but
since 1536 was held from the Crown.[62]
Bannow
in the late fifteenth century
Meanwhile, from the
middle of the fifteenth century the economy had sufficiently recovered from the
Black Death of 1350 and subsequent plagues along with the disruption to trade
by the Hundred Years War to see new buildings across the landscape. Church,
abbeys, and tower houses were built a new or old structures go a big facelift.
The 1429 subsidy of £10 to anyone who would erect a fortified castle or tower
within the Pale is often seen as the start of tower house construction as a
response to civil unrest and a break own in law and order. But it is in the
good agricultural land where most tower houses were erected and these areas
were more often than not within the land of peace. But without economic
improvement from 1450 onwards landlords would simply not be able to afford to
build tower houses. Thus tower houses are to be seen not so much as a
reflection of civil unrest but as a reflection of economic improvement. North
County Wexford was often seen as the area of civil unrest yet most of the tower
houses in Wexford are in the quiet southern half of the county with the
majority of these in the baronies of Forth and Bargy. In 1598 the baronies of
Forth and Bargy were described as ‘the most civil part, contained within a
river called the Pill, where the ancient gentlemen descended on the first
conquerors, do inhabit’.[63]
The civil parish of
Bannow had tower houses at Bannow, Barrystown, Cullenstown, Newtown, Coolhull,
and Danescastle.[64]
By 1640 some of these places were still owned by Anglo-Norman families such as
Cullen, Duff and Cheevers. In the changing map of seventeenth Wexford, Nicholas
Loftus, Protestant, held Bannow castle.[65]
By 1700 much of the parish of Bannow was owned by the Boyce family.[66]
Tower houses in Bannow and surrounds
Bannow
after the medieval age
The economic, political
and environmental changes that occurred after the end of the medieval age
played bad for Bannow. The new medieval town of New Ross is said to have had a
negative economic impact on Bannow, Clonmines and The Island.[67] In
1535 Bannow was attacked by Butler gallowglasses and kerne in the battle
between Fitzgerald of Kildare and the Butlers of Kilkenny for control of
Ireland. Later in 1600 Bannow was again attacked, this time by the Irish led by
Donal Spainneach as part of the Nine Years War.[68] Yet
the medieval town continued as in 1603 the town was listed as one of the chief
nine towns in Co. Wexford and in 1615 the church and chancel was still in
repair.[69] In
the middle of the seventeenth century there were still a number of thatched
houses in the borough arranged along a number of named streets. Many of the
people who lived in these houses were of English and Flemish origin. They were
there on that first day when Robert Fitz Stephen sailed into Bannow Bay. When
the great William Marshal came into town they were there and after him came the
people of Valence and Bromwich and Talbot and the Bannow people lived on.
But it was not the
march of political armies or economic changed which finally cause the end of
Bannow. The place was blessed with its location beside the sea with access to
the global communication system of its day – sailing ships. Yet when the sea
decided to push the sand out of the water and onto the land around Bannow the
town had no defence. By the end of the seventeenth century much of the town was
covered in sand.[70]
In 1800, when the parliamentary borough of Bannow ceased to send two M.P.s to
the Irish Parliament, the medieval town was no longer in existence. By 1837
Bannow was known as “the Irish Herculaneum”. The mainland part of Bannow parish
continued to exist and in the nineteenth century its farmers were considered
comfortable and prosperous.[71] Today
little of the medieval town stands visible above the sand except the ruined
church of St. Mary.[72]
==============
End of post
==============
[1]
Goddard Henry Orpen, Ireland under the
Normans 1169-1333 (Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2005), vol. III, p. 88
[2]
Geraldine Stout, ‘Wexford in Prehistory 5000 BC to 300 AD’, in Wexford History and Society, edited by
Kevin Whelan (Geography Publications, Dublin, 1987), pp. 17, 30
[3]
Richard Roche, ‘Forth and Bargy – a place apart’, in Wexford History and Society, p. 104
[4]
Richard Roche, ‘Forth and Bargy – a place apart’, in Wexford History and Society, pp. 104, 105
[5]
Paul MacCotter, Medieval Ireland:
Territorial, Political and Economic Divisions (Four Courts Press, Dublin,
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[7]
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[21]
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[22]
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Philomena Connolly (ed.), Irish Exchequer
Payments (Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 1998), pp. 403, 425
[44]
Eric St. John Brooks (ed.), Knight’s fees
in Counties Wexford, Carlow and Kilkenny (Stationery Office, Dublin, 1950),
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[48] Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward III,
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[49] Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward III,
1370-1374, p. 90
[50] https://chancery.tcd.ie/document/close/48-edward-iii/81
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Billy Colfer, ‘Anglo-Norman Settlement in County Wexford’, in Wexford History and Society, p. 91
[64]
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3.11
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Daniel Gahan, ‘The Estate System of County Wexford’, in Wexford History and Society, p. 208
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Normans 1169-1333, vol. III, p. 88
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