Caroline Newcombe. How early Irish marital property law influenced the end of Brehon Law by History Hub

'How early Irish marital property law influenced the end of Brehon Law' by Prof. Caroline Newcombe (Southwestern).

Although the military defeat of the Irish by the English was decided at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, early Irish law, known as Brehon law still existed side by side with English common law. When he became Soliciter General of Ireland in 1603, Sir John Davies saw Brehon Law as an obstacle to the final conquest of Ireland. This was because the application of Irish law to property rights produced produced results dramatically different from English common law. For example, English wives lost their legal personhood (and their property) when they married under the common law, and the "two became one." Brehon law was different. It permitted an Irish married woman to continue to own her own separate property. In the case of Gravelkind, an English court declared that: Irish law was not "law" at all; that an Irish woman's right to hold separate property was illegal; that all "separate" property should be given to the husband; and that from now on, Ireland was to be governed by the common law of England. In a more famous case, decided at the same time, Davies also declared "tanistry" to be illegal too and put in its place the common law rule of primogeniture. The significance of the cases of Gravelkind and Tanistry cannot be overestimated. The cases represented legal imperialism at its most severe. They were spurred on by the belief that after the military defeat, that native Irish law was the single most important barrier to English sovereignty over the Irish.

The 6th Annual Tudor & Stuart Ireland Interdisciplinary Conference took place at NUI Galway in August, 2016. The conference was generously supported by: an NUI Galway President's Award for Research Excellence (awarded to Prof. Steven Ellis); the Moore Institute, NUI Galway; the Discipline of History, NUI Galway and the Society for Renaissance Studies.

As in previous years the majority of papers were recorded for podcasting by https://soundcloud.com/real-smart-media in association with www.historyhub.ie. There are now more than 140 podcasts from previous Tudor and Stuart Ireland conferences freely available. To access this archive go to www.historyhub.ie/podcasts or visit tudorstuartireland.com