Lorna Moloney. From Gaelic lordship to English shire: the MacNamaras of Clare by History Hub

'From Gaelic lordship to English shire: The MacNamaras of Clare' by Lorna Moloney (NUIG).

In A View of the Present State of Ireland, Edmund Spenser, compares the ancient origins by the MacNamaras to: the great Mortimer, who is forgetting Howe great he was once in England, or English at all, is now become the most barbarous of them all, and is now called Macnemarra, Spenser’s Irenius further us that the Duke of Clarence did shutt them upp [Gaelic Irish} within those narrowe corners and glennes under the mountayne foot in which they lurked, and soe kept them from breaking any further, by buildinge strang holdes uppon everie border, and fortifyinge all passages: This paper examines the replacement of the MacNamara Gaelic lordship in sixteenth century Thomond by the new shire of County Clare. It focuses on three core principles of shire creation, security, taxation and administration. The transition from gaelic lordship to English shire is rapid and takes in less than thirty years. Two centuries of military force provided by the MacNamaras to the crown, the rights and tributes exacted from annexed territories exacted by the MacNamaras, with almost 60 castles in East Clare count for nothing. The hybrid states of baronial creation result in a transitionary nature of Shire operations. New baronies of TullanAspill and Dengyn Iweggin in 1585 are quickly replaced by the baronies of Tulla and Bunratty dominating the Tudor organisational framework. The journey to fixed baronial borders, gaols, sheriffs and newly appointed core administrative personnel are analysed in this paper arguing that the MacNamaras are unrecognised, and the lordships is forgotten in a Tudor landscape.

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