January 3, 2024 • 43 mins
Often, the stories we tell about colonization focus on the takeovers themselves, and the circumstances that led up to them. But what happens to the people when the dust settles? How do they manage the clash of two cultures and often two law codes? And how do the stories they tell about themselves and each other help them navigate society? This week, Danièle speaks with Joanna MacGugan about how the justice system worked in Ireland under medieval English rule, how communities shaped justice, and what this meant when a person was faced with capital punishment.
You can support this podcast on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists
You can support this podcast on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
Hi everyone, and welcome to episodetwo hundred and twenty five and the beginning
of year five of the Medieval Podcast. I'm Danielle Sabalski, also known as
the five Minute Medievalist. A lotof medieval history and history in general,
involves colonization, not just of unoccupiedlands, but of lands in which human
settlements had already been firmly established.Often the stories we tell focus on the
(00:39):
takeovers themselves and the circumstances that ledup to them. But what happens to
the people when the dust settles?How do they manage the clash of two
cultures and often two law codes,and how do the stories they tell about
themselves and each other help them navigatesociety. This week I spoke with doctor
Joanna macgogin about social memory, politics, justice and death in medieval Ireland.
(01:03):
Joe was a copy editor with DragonflyEditorial and an independent scholar whose work spends
Arthurian literature, medieval Irish justice,and reputation in early modern witchcraft trials.
Her new book is Social Memory,Reputation and the Politics of Death in the
Medieval Irish Lordship. Our conversation onhow the justice system worked in Ireland under
(01:23):
medieval English rule. How communities shapedjustice and what this meant when a person
was faced with capital punishment is comingup right after this. But thank you
Joe for joining me to talk aboutIreland and law and orality and all sorts
of amazing stuff. It's great tomeet you and have you on the podcast.
Thank you so much. I'm soexcited to be here. It's my
(01:47):
pleasure. So Ireland we have anEnglish presence there. How did that happen?
How did the English end up inIreland? Well, the short story
is in eleven sixty nine, Jarmadmcmurra. He was the king of Leinster.
He lost his throne to his rivalRory O'Connor, and he begged Henry
(02:07):
the Second of England for help toreclaim his throne. So Henry sent Welsh
and Norman knights to aid him,and they basically enjoyed the Irish countryside so
much they decided to stay and settlethere. You see a lot of Second
Sons going to Ireland to settle becausethere wasn't a lot of land available in
England at the time. I wentto the first sons, so they settled
(02:29):
in Henry. He governed Ireland asa lordship of the crown, so as
a colonial situation. So in theperiod that I studied, mostly the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, it's about onehundred years after colonization. You see the
Irish, the English, Scots,Norse populations all intermingling and integrating. So
(02:52):
it's very much melting pot in Irelandat the time. And where are people
mostly situated. So if we're lookingat the island, where's the English presence
mostly found, they are concentrated onthe east coast, So the eastern seaboard
was mostly English, and then theydid branch inland. We'll see little pockets
of Irish lordships within the English territory, but for the most part that the
(03:15):
eastern seaboard was English and the westernseaboard remained in Irish under Irish control,
so it was never a complete conquest, which is one reason that the medieval
lordship sort of faltered in the LateMiddle Ages because they didn't they didn't have
a complete conquest the Irish or therewere always Irish lordships that resisted colonization and
(03:37):
rebelled against it, so power shifted, a lot, allegiances shifted. There
were some Irish that allied with theEnglish, and there were some that rebelled
and denied colonization. So it doesa lot happening. Yeah, I mean,
well that's expected when you have peopleshowing up on your shores, You're
not really going to necessarily be readyto play nicy with them. Although with
(03:58):
this kind of situation there's always oneof the things you mentioned in the book,
some people that are willing to bendand other people who are not.
So what were some of the justificationsthat the English had for staying and for
thinking that they were able to ruleor should rule over a population that had
already been there for a very longtime. It was power, It was
(04:20):
you know, it was land andpower, and I want to say hubris
a little bit, I mean,which is the case in most you know,
colonization. I think it was anearly idea of empire, you know,
this idea that they could take overthese neighboring countries that they saw as
less than civilized, you know,the Irish. There was a long standing
(04:43):
idea among the English that the Irishr and civilized. There were savages and
the English, as you know,superiors, They had the right to that
land and to show them the lightcan you also often see in other colonial
contexts. So that idea of theIrish as very savage that persisted for a
very long time, and that wasone of the factors in colonization there,
(05:08):
right, And so they're not veryshy about this. In England they're saying
this law. I think it wasEdward the first that said, this law
is basically no law at all.It's just completely savage. So we need
to bring our law and we needto impose it on the people. But
it wasn't that simple, was it. How did the law work when you
had two different laws in the samespace at the same time. It was
(05:30):
a It was a mess. Sothat in theory English common law prevailed in
the areas under English control, butthen you have in the marches and in
the fringes of the colony, youhave sort of a hybrid situation. They
called Marcher law, which wasn't officiallyrecognized like it was in Wales at the
time, but it was a lotof private lordships sort of adopted elements of
(05:56):
the native Gaelic law in legal systemsand legal culture and used it in their
private manner courts. So you sawHaybrid situation. Sometimes they would appeal to
English common law and sometimes they wouldappeal to glic law when it sort of
suited their interests the best. It'soh, yeah, there's a lot going
on there, and it's hard toentangle except for sort of in a local
(06:19):
context. And I imagine over thecourse of your research doing this whole century,
that it's evolving over time. Right, it's still notifying and right,
people are starting to close those doorsinto possible avenues, right, yes,
And I mean common law was evolvingat the time too, you know,
it was more laws were becoming youknow, recorded and writing, but the
(06:42):
common law was sort of still indevelopment. So yeah, it's fascinating to
look at, sort of on theground, how that played out in very
local context. That's what I enjoy. Yeah, yeah, and especially when
you're looking at these individual cases andyou have these characters coming up that are
super fun and do you want toget into those short But we are talking
or we're going to be talking soonwhen we're talking about court cases, especially
(07:04):
about the importance of oral culture.And we know that the Irish were doing
amazing work when it came to creatingbooks at this time, So It's not
like literacy is unknown to the Irishpopulation and then the English show up and
then everyone's literate. But can yougive us a sense of what the culture
was like in Ireland among the nativeIrish when it comes to orality and literacy,
(07:29):
How is that working among that populationThat I didn't look at as closely,
So I don't know if I canspeak to it as as coherently as
maybe my advisor could. He doesbook at Brendan Kane, he does study
the Irish what was happening in theGaelic Irish societies. But I would say
it was very sophisticated. I mean, we had at that point we had
(07:51):
Irish poets composing written poetry, wehad you know, a lot of the
laws were written down. I meanit was I think, on a par
with what we see happening in mainlandEurope. That you know, literacy was
just and of course, I meanthe early Irish monks were responsible for so
much of European literacy and creating manuscriptsand all that. So it was a
(08:13):
very learned society. Absolutely, therewas a lot happening there with taking a
reality and committing it to manuscripts.Yeah, and One of the things that
you mentioned in the book is thatone of the bits of Irish culture that
starts to infuse itself into the Englishcolonial culture there is the Bardic poetry,
especially if people are taking on thisway of telling stories that was already in
(08:37):
Ireland before the English showed up,and integrating that. And sometimes the people
in England are not super happy aboutthat, right, But who wouldn't want,
you know, a barred on staffto sing their praises, to come
to their dinners and entertain Like Ithink it's Yeah, it's brilliant to see
the English adopting those elements. Yeah, that would be the type of thing
(09:00):
that I'd want to have in mycastle, no matter what the kid the
King over the Sea had to sayabout it, you know, words about
me exactly. So one of thephrases that you use in this book,
especially when it's coming to legal mattersand sort of the evolution of how literacy
is happening at this time, you'retalking about pragmatic literacy. So what do
(09:22):
you mean by this? Pragmatic literacyis sort of literate practices, so that
the kind of literacy that someone wouldacquire in the course of everyday business.
So someone might not necessarily be ableto read, but they could keep accounting
book. They knew the importance ofarchiving important documents, that those kind of
(09:43):
practices. That's what you know,pragmatic literacy was, so they not if
they couldn't read, they could stillrecognize the importance of the written word,
the written record. Yeah. AndI think one of the things that's really
important that you say in the bookis was if somebody is peasant class,
we shouldn't assume that they were illiterateby any means, because they might well
(10:05):
be educated, or they might havethis pragmatic literacy as you say, right,
Yes, yeah, they could.They signed documents, they consult the
notaries, they understood all of youknow the importance of that, Yeah,
which is important to remember. Soyour book works around law, as we're
talking about, but you really centerit on death. Why did you pick
(10:26):
death as the sort of cohesive placeto start to talk about these things?
Well, it took is most dissertationsdo a very meandering path to my final
product. I started looking at deathand dying and what kind of interested me
was what happens when someone dies unexpectedlyor violently or what happens when they're hanged?
(10:50):
You know, what are the legaldimensions there? What does the coroner
do? Why is the corner acoveted power to have? So all these
questions sort of steered me towards deathas the framework, and as I dove
into the sources, I saw thatsocial memory was so important in all of
these contexts and the legal culture.The foundation of this legal culture was very
(11:13):
very much oral, and you know, social memory was a guiding force in
this legal culture. So it justthey these two strands came together, the
death and dying and the aftermath ofdeath and what happens to social memory as
literate practices are taking root? Howis social memory incorporated into this legal culture?
What role does it have in decidingwho who faces the gallows? You
(11:37):
know, questions like that, Theyjust sort of emerged as this interwoven braid.
Yeah, it's very hard when you'redoing any history. It's it's sort
of untangled things so that they clearlycome apart, so it all works togethering
and nice thee in this book,I think you've done a good job of
(11:58):
trying to section off one bit andtalk think about that. So let's go
back to the coroner. We stillhave the office of the coroner today in
medieval Ireland. Who's the corner?How do they get that job and what
is the job? Well, theywere elected and they were usually you know,
local men of some prominence, buta lot of men did not want
(12:20):
the job because there wasn't a lotof glory in it. But it was
very important to the crown. Thesewere royal coroners and they were important because
they were responsible for basically collecting revenue. They would take the property of felons
that would be forfeited to them andas no agents of the crown, they
would give it to the king tohold and that was very important and that's
(12:41):
one reason why it was i thinka very powerful position. But you also
see private coroners on private manors.The Archbishop of Dublin had his bailiff foot
served as corner even though he wasn'tsupposed to technically, But there isn't a
lot of evidence for this in Ireland. So my focus was on the royal
coeigner and how he served the kingand how people contested his role. Right,
(13:05):
So you're talking about the corner beinginvolved in felonies. Were they only
involved with the death part or werethey involved with any felonies even if they
didn't involve visiting a body or somethinglike that. They had other jobs as
well. They would hear abjurations fromfelons in sanctuary, they would take property
(13:26):
of convicted felons. Their main rolewas investigating deaths, conducting in quests and
things like that, but they didhave they did have other jobs as well.
Okay, so the corner is aboutto investigate a death. There's a
body. Let's law and order itfor a minute. There's a body,
the coroner is called, what dothey have to do? Well? The
(13:46):
best evidence we have for that comesfrom Dublin in the Laws and Usage As.
There's a passage from the early fourteenthcentury about sort of what to do,
you know, if you find abody, So the coroner should be
some immediate lea as soon as thebody is discovered. But what we see
in Dublin is instructions for people beforethe corners on the scene. So if
(14:09):
a person, if the you know, a head of household, discovers a
dead body, what does he do? He is supposed to summon his neighbors,
twelve neighbors at least if he canask them to vouch for him that
he didn't do this and none ofhis family did this. This is just
a dead body he found, andthen they were sort of supposed to establish
a collective truth before the coroner arriveson the scene. Once the coroner arrives,
(14:30):
he must view the body. Itwas illegal to bury a body without
view of the coroner, and thenhe would conduct his inquest into what happened.
The jurors would be neighbors as well, so they would have ideally the
best knowledge of the people involved inthe crime, or you know, if
they knew who the victim was,if they knew who the killer was,
(14:50):
they were the ones to consult.So the jurors, sorry, the coroner's
inquest would be the first step inestablishing that truth about what happened. And
so they bring the jury together eventually, and they've actually written down those oaths
that a juror is supposed to take, and as you mentioned, the sort
of oath that the person who findsthe body is supposed to take. So
(15:11):
what do these oaths involve? Arethey the same as you see today,
like where you put a hand onthe Bible and you say you're going to
tell the truth if you're a witness, Do they have the same elements?
What are they like, these oathsthat the jury has to take. So
the jury, yeah, they would. They would be sort of a formal
I swear to tell the truth,the whole truth, and you know,
an early version of that, butthe truth would be sort of to the
(15:33):
best of their knowledge, you know, based on what they know of local
gossip and the person's reputation and thingslike that. So yeah, it was
rather formal. The laws and usagesof Dublin records, you know what exactly
they're supposed to say. There's awhole script for the coroner's inquest, but
I haven't found elsewhere in this kindof detail. I know in England they
(15:54):
have similar, similar things happening,but I haven't seen this, this sort
of very straightforward script that they weresupposed to follow, and that gives you
order an organization to the inquest.It helps provide guidance to both the coroner
and the jurors. Yeah, andI think one of the things as you're
talking, it's occurring to me isthat it makes it seem very formalized in
(16:17):
that we have conducted this properly becausewe have followed this formula. It's not
just people saying something. Do youthink that's an accurate characterization of how it's
working. Yes, absolutely, Yeah. If they follow the script to the
t, then it sort of absolvesthem of any wrongdoing. And especially with
the head of household who discovers thebody, if he doesn't follow that script,
(16:38):
he's in trouble. You know thathe can be prosecuted for it if
he doesn't follow that. So it'sdefinitely there for them to follow. By
the book, that was really interestingto me because it is the unwritten law
that's been codified now and they catchthat oral element in the written law.
Yeah, and I love seeing isfinding that and the you know, signs
(17:00):
of morality in these written sources.Yeah, because behind the scenes, it's
so different from what we are expectingin modern times where they're supposed to be
objective and not know the people.But here, one of the points that
you're making in the book is thatthey're building a collective social memory about this
by all contributing what they know aboutit and talking about it. And one
(17:22):
of the concepts that you're mentioning inthe book is about fama. So can
you tell us about what this is. Yes, this was a sort of
a universal concept across medieval Europe.This idea of reputation was the most important
thing. It was prized, thisidea of you know, what a person's
word is worth. It's it's theirreputation, It's how they hold themselves among
(17:45):
their community, how they're respected.It decides everything. Fama can be everything,
it's just. It decides how you'retreated in court. It decides,
you know, whether you're hanged fora crime or not. It's so important.
And this idea that jurors, itwas jurors who aren't familiar with someone's
fama that had that power to decidethese cases, rather than I tinerant justices
(18:08):
who they didn't have access to thisyou know local knowledge that they do.
So they rely very much these youknow, high colonial government authorities. They
had to rely on this very localknowledge of a person's fama to make their
decisions. So it empowers jurors verymuch, and that's I don't think they
get enough credit for that in thehistoriography. I think we often see,
(18:30):
you know, these colonial elites governingthe lordship, but they depend so much
on local jurors knowledge, their knowledgeof a person's fama to really understand,
you know, what was happening throughoutthe lordship and who the Irish enemies were
and who the Irish allies were,Like this is they depend so much on
these local chairs. So I wonderfrom the question, no, but this
(18:55):
is where I wanted to go withthis. So one of the lines that
you have in the book is basicallythat is controlling the justice of the community
so that it is like a communitybuilt justice. How did you see this
reflected in the sentences that came downfrom juries. Was everybody just sent to
the executioner right away? No,that would make a colorful story, though
(19:18):
it would, but they did.Did you see the sharers weighing fauma in
circumstance? You know, social context, all of these factors of relationships,
social networks, all of these werefactors and their decisions. So you would
see an homicide if the victim wasknown to be an Irish enemy of the
king, you know, it wouldbe welcomed and rewarded. That was not
(19:41):
a problem. If the victim wasa common robber who just you know,
constantly raided towns and just caused problemsall the time, that's fine, we're
not going to punish the killer becausethey benefited the peace of the community by
taking this personal equations. And thenyou see the flip side. You see
the reputation of the killer is makinga huge difference as well. So if
(20:06):
the person who committed the crime isknown to be a common robber, a
constant, persistent problem in the community, then they would most likely hang.
But if that person committed a crimeout of you know, starvation, if
he robbed a home because he wasyou know, it was a time of
famine and he was driven to it, but otherwise had a very solid reputation
(20:26):
in the community, then he wouldusually be acquitted. So it just,
you know, so much hangs onthe reputation within the community mm hm.
And how well they know each other, as in the people that you want
on the jury are family members orwho know you? How does this work
in a colonial context? So sayyou're an Irish person who is living under
(20:51):
the rule of the English and youhave to call a jury. Who are
you going to call it to beyour witnesses? Who do you think would
work best for a person in thissituation? Well, I mean it depends
on proximity. If you're talking atcriminal trial, it would be the closest
neighbors, so it would be theperson that knew you. They knew every
feud you know, in that immediateneighborhood. So there wasn't, you know,
(21:15):
total control on who sits on thejury. If you're very well connected,
you want those people that know youbest to be on the jury.
The chances of acquiddal would be muchmuch greater. It's interesting in one of
the jurys we see it was atCastle Kevin. It was an inquisition into
the Archbishop of Dublin's customs and thismanner. It was at the foothills of
(21:38):
the Wicklow Mountains, a very Irisharea, so you see Irish names running
through the testimony, and you alsosee Irish names among the jurors. So
that's sort of an outlier among theinquisitions. But that's a really great example
of how the Irish really participated injustice as well. Yeah, and I
think that that is one of thearguments you make as well, is that
(22:03):
that participation in things like justice orcommunity increased your FAMA, and it was
something that you wanted to make surewas part of the equation. Right,
So what kind of people would getgreater reputations in colonized Ireland amongst the colonizers.
Oh but that's a wow, that'sa really good question. I think
it basically comes down to just treatingyour neighbors well. And we see that
(22:26):
again in the laws and usages.We see that the head of household,
you know, must not verbally abusehis neighbors that he has assembled, because
that will come back to haunt him. So this idea of neighborliness, cooperation,
community policing, not that every youknow, neighborhood was all you know,
rosy and comfortable and cozy and bestfriends. Absolutely not. There was
(22:48):
also, you know, there werealways feuds. But this idea that you
should treat your neighbors well because theywill it will help you in the end,
and in terms of community policing,it will help to achieve justice es
for the whole community, so thatthe greater good. It was so important,
you know, watch your language,don't abuse people with your tongue.
That was a big part of it, and in fact, that led to
(23:11):
a lot of crimes in men's laughter, didn't it. Can you tell us
a little bit about the ways thatpeople might be starting a feud by throwing
insults. And I'm especially thinking ofwhat you noticed about the gendered insults that
people are throwing out. Yes,the insults. That was so much fun
to read and write about the wordsthat they used. So you see insults,
(23:33):
you know, often with the rootcause of violence and ended in deaths
in the court roles, and theywere gendered in the sense that, you
know, kind of the way youwould expect that women were accused of being
loose and their virtue would be underattack. That would be sort of the
most common insults thrown at them.And for men who would be you know,
(23:53):
their honor, their quality of work. I mean, we see an
insult towards a tailor. There wasa tavern brawl in thirteen eleven, I
think where someone was drinking and heinsulted the local tailor and that started a
tavern brawl and it ended in death. They thought someone got clubbed on the
head and it ended that way.Just the idea of attacking someone's sort of
(24:17):
overall reputation and sense of honor.It was very important to defend your honor
in the time, of course.I mean that's all over, you know,
you're at ball over England as well, but you see it happening in
Ireland as well. Well. Oneof the things that you mentioned was today
we think of homicide as being theworst thing you can do. It is
the most heavily punished. But youmentioned that in Ireland it's outrageous crimes.
(24:40):
So crimes that are going to makethe whole community feel outrage that would be
something more like stealing from the church, where you could get off on a
homicide, for doing military service orpaying Can you tell us more about how
that fell out, sort of howthe crimes were looked at by the community,
like which ones were more important.Yeah, So if you look at
the kind of crimes that ended incapital punishment, you see crimes against property
(25:03):
most often. And part of thisis because at the time crimes against property
were crimes against the king, thatthey were taken more seriously, whereas homicides
they were often excusable in many contexts. For instance, if someone was defending
their honor or self defense, selfdefense usually ended in acquittal, and because
the jurors knew the situation, theyknew the people at play, they could
(25:27):
vouch for, yes, this happenedin self defense and they would be acquitted.
So homicides. You often see peoplepaying a fine to get out of
homicides. That was just sort ofmore common. And the pardons you asked
about. The pardons, people couldrely on their social networks to purchase pardons
from the king. And this wasthe period where as was under Edward the
(25:49):
First, who was operating wars inScotland. He was dealing with the hostile
Irish and the rebellious English and Ireland. He had a lot of wars going
on many different fronts, needed soldiers. He granted pardons, you know,
just very an EGOLDI pickledatist if youwanted one, if you had the means
in the social networks, it wasvery easy to purchase a pardon for pretty
(26:12):
much any crime that would give themimmunity, and often it would be in
return for military service in Scotland orIreland. So you do see some very
dastardly crimes go completely unpunished for thisreason. And interesting, this was sort
of a weird thing that I sawis that these people, even if they
(26:32):
had this ill reputation, this negativefama, they were still able to rely
on their social networks to secure thesepardons. So that was one area where
FAMA sort of didn't matter that thispurchase of a pardon could overrule a negative
FAMA. So that's one instance wherethe written records sort of trumps the social
(26:52):
memory of this person's crimes and thereputation that follows that person. Yeah,
I was talking about Gallows with Kennethdug In not too long ago, and
we were talking a lot about howsomeone might be exiled or take sanctuary or
that kind of thing instead of beinghanged, and that this solved the problem
in the same way that military servicesolve is a problem in that that person
(27:15):
is out of the community and they'reout of their hair and they've solved the
problem by not making more trouble.So did you think that that's how people
saw it at the time, Like, if you're doing military service, at
least you're not in the community anymore. That's good enough for us. Yes.
Absolutely, it brings peace to thecommunity, and that was sort of
the goal right in the end thatthey wanted. And I think you also,
(27:37):
it's complicated when jurors know the peoplecharged with crimes or they know the
victims, and they have to makethat decision about Okay, do we send
them to the gallows or not.I mean, that's a horrible decision to
have to make in any context.So I think it was there was some
relief that there were these alternative paths. Also that yes, okay, send
(27:59):
them to go. That absolves usof having to make that decision. Yeah,
for sure. And you do havea chart in the book that mentions
the number of hangings and some years, I mean most years it barely gets
into the double digits. Some yearsthere's only two. And I think that
would really surprise people. And Ithink one of the reasons is hesitation to
(28:19):
do that to somebody that you know. One is that you could get a
pardon. These are all arguments thatyou mentioned, but one that you also
mention is that nobody wants to bean executioner. So let's stop for a
second and talk about who's the executionerwho's doing this job? Because it's not
a pretty job. Who ends updoing this for the county? It's not
(28:41):
a pretty job. And I couldn'tfind a lot about it in the sources
I really wanted to. In latersources, early modern you see more of
that, and you see the executionersbrought from England that would do that job
because the Irish did not want to, or the Old English as they were
called at the time, did notwant to either. But in the medieval
(29:02):
period there's not a lot about whothe executioners were. There's some evidence that
people were sort of pushed into thejob. In England, you see sometimes
it's a part of the terms ofrent that yes, you can rent this
property for me, but you willalso serve as executioner for my private court.
That happens, and it's likely thatprobably also happened in Ireland. I
(29:23):
haven't found the sources to support that, but I think it's a likely scenario.
It would normally be the English thatwould do the executions. Yeah,
it's horrible. I can't even imaginebeing enlisted to do that job. If
it's you're just the most likely person, or we have the most leverage on
you through rents or whatever, youhave to do the job. And it
(29:47):
makes a lot of sense when Iwas speaking with Kenneth about sometimes people walking
away from the gallows and just kindof not noticing that the people get cut
down by someone else, because it'snot something that most people would want to
do, especially to someone they knowthe community. Yes, and I think
there was. I think there wasan instance of just sort of random passers
by being enlisted to do it.Also just like oh, here's a stranger
(30:08):
in the community, we'll get themto do it. That would happen.
Also, Yeah, the hangings themselvesare not the big public spectacles they would
become, you know later in theearly modern period. They were very much
sort of let's just do it quietly, and it was public in the sense
it would take place in a publicgreen, a public place, but it
wasn't would it didn't draw big crowds. Nobody really wanted to see it,
(30:30):
and they would leave them hanging normallyfor you know, maybe a matter of
days until someone took pity and tookthem down. It seems so foreign to
the way we do things now.Yeah, and yet if you think about
the entire context, it makes somuch more sense than the thing that you
might see in media where people arejust so eagerly seeing someone hang. It's
(30:51):
like usually, I think when youthink about it being someone in the community
or someone that you've had to passjudgment on, of course you don't want
to be there for that. Yeah, it makes sure dark. It's very
dark, and it's kind of fascinatingthat it did become this spectacle where they
would people would be, you know, open the pubs and they'd be it'd
be almost like a I don't entertainment, it's wow, Yeah, it's dark.
(31:15):
I think it almost has to bea stranger in those context skids personally,
I don't think humans are necessarily builtfor wanting to see that, and
that's a good thing. I thinkit's a good thing too. So how
did ethnicity play out in convictions?Because I think that you were looking into
like somebody with an Irish last name, Are they more likely to be convicted?
(31:37):
Are they more likely to be executed? How did that play out in
the records that you looked at.Well, I found that Irish they were
not more likely to be convicted,because again that would just come down to
their reputation in the community, butthey were more likely to hang for their
crimes, which is interesting and I'mnot exactly sure of the reasons why the
ethnicity is so. It was oftenso murky because the Irish could purchase the
(32:04):
power to use English law or tobe protected under English common law, and
justice would sort of be the samefor them as it would be for you.
Know an English person, but sofew people had the means to purchase
those and so few written records existthat it was social memory basically, that
that would sort out who was Irishand who was not. Dependent on local
(32:24):
knowledge and social memory again, andit was complicated because you would see Irish
people adopting English names to sort ofpass try to pass themselves off as English
without that you know, record thatthey had the power of English law.
And you see killers claiming that theirvictims were Irish so they would secure a
lesser punishment and hope that the jurywould back them up. Or you see
(32:47):
juries actually protecting you know, thekiller because they were well connected. There
was one one murderer. His communitysort of helped him get out of several
homicides charges, and in one casehe claimed his victim was Irish. The
coroner's inquest, the corners the questjury also said the victim was Irish,
(33:08):
but then a later trial jury said, no, this victim was English and
it should have been a harsher penaltyfor this murder. So it's complicated.
It's the ethnicity is it relied somuch on what the jurors present as the
truth. So they had the powerto create the truth that they wanted.
And one of the things that youmentioned that I really thought about and I
(33:30):
think is really interesting if we thinkabout it in a modern context when it
comes to like social media and cancelingpeople and stuff like that, where if
you're constructing a social memory of aperson and their fumba, it's always in
the present in that everyone might beaware of past events and things like that,
but it's always, I think,a lot more balanced towards how are
(33:51):
they acting in the community in thelast year, in the last two years,
rather than what they may have doneas a youth. Do you think
that is again, like an accuratecharacterization of how they're looking at it.
I think it is because fama doeschange over time. You know, you
can be redeemed within your community forthings that you've done. What I found
really interesting was that even ethnicity couldbe fluid, and what mattered was their
(34:15):
ethnicity at the time of their death. So they would say, the jurors
would say, at the time ofhis death, this person was taken to
be Irish, which implies that likeprior to their death, they could have
been considered something else. And it'svery strange and I don't quite understand it,
you know, how in this ethnicitycould be fluid. Just it's a
different idea of ethnicity than we havein the modern period, and it's something
(34:37):
I'd like to explore more. Imean, I can see how it would
be fluid in a sense where someonewho is English might adopt some Gaelic culture,
but they would always be English.They would still always be English in
the end. Someone who's Irish thathas access to English law, they would
still be Irish in the end.So I don't know. This idea of
(34:58):
fluidity is just something It's fascinating andinteresting and something I just want to sort
of try to untangle. I guessthat's my project. Well it's an ethnicity
be fluid. We don't see itthat way. Really. Yeah, it
might be sort of analogous to whatis the most recent box they checked on
the census. You know, thereare lots of people who are biracial,
(35:20):
especially in places where there's a historyof colonization, where you know, you
can only check one box on thesense is what is your background? What
are you calling it? And maybethey're thinking of it fluidity in those terms
where maybe you have two parents thatare one is English and one is Irish,
and how are they most relating tothe community within this context. Maybe
it's more like that, but Idon't know that that's a really good point.
(35:43):
It could be. It could belike that, and we see new
categories arising, you know, asas a population's mingle more. Yeah,
it's it's really really interesting and Ithink also complicated by you know, you
have Scots people living in Ireland,you have the original in the Norse,
the vikings that were there before theEnglish came. It was literally a melting
(36:04):
pot, so there was all sortsof the ancestry was very blended. So
at the point that I look atit's so hard to entangle who who is
who that those written records, youknow, it's complicated. Well, this
is a question that if you addressin the book, I really need to
go back and look at it.But you do mention there's a time out
of mind and there's a time that'sin the minds of man and quotation works.
(36:30):
Do you have a sense that thememories of elders had any sort of
more weight than the memories of justeverybody sort of an idea of everybody knows
this? Is there a different placefor the memories of elders. When it
comes to the social construct of memoryor somebody's place in the community. Did
you get a sense of that orit's not really super clear. It's not
(36:52):
super clear. But there was oneinstance where that did come through very clearly,
and that was in the writing ofthe Boundaries of Dublin. So this
was the perambulation they would do regularly. It was a custom that they did,
and we have sort of scattered recordsof it over you know, two
hundred years or so, the recordsof the writing in one of them,
(37:14):
and it's pretty late, i wantto say, sixteenth century. Maybe my
memory is a bit fuzzy because thatwasn't the sort of a major part of
the book. But you do seethat they consult the elders. It's a
writing party. It's it's a partyon horseback, literally just traversing the boundaries
as they're written out in the elevenninety two charter from Prince John. And
(37:34):
they specifically stay in this record ofthe writing that they're consulting the elders for
their memories, and the elders wouldsay, yes, this place was formerly
known as this in previous years,but now it's called this, and they
could have sort of charted the changesthat they've seen over their lifetime. So
I thought that that was really interesting. That's where the elders really shine through.
(37:55):
And you see scattered in other sourcesthis, you know, references to
a usage. So Dublin's Laws andUsagees is one one example that in the
prenable it says these laws were followedin ancient times. And it's very important
to acknowledge these ancient roots of thewritten laws because it gives a more authority
(38:15):
and more legitimacy. So in thewriting you see the elder sort of playing
that role. They're offering their legitimacyand an authority to this writing to establish
these boundaries and reinforce these cities' boundaries. I think that that is such a
beautiful way of looking at it,and maybe something that is such a natural
part of our lives that we forgetabout it, that we are looking backwards
(38:37):
to elders telling us how things havechanged. And when we think about history
like it is all a construct thatwe're building together and we can disagree on
it and it'll change over time.And this idea of social memory, I
think is very beautiful looking at ourown lives as well as looking back to
the past. Absolutely, and thisidea that now we can draw from oral
(39:00):
histories to learn that and to acknowledgethat past. And you know, we
don't have that for the medieval periodunfortunately. We have sort of an idea
of the oral history as they presented. We have it in writing, but
it is that what they've actually said, We don't know. But now we
do have the benefit of people recordingoral histories and getting those memories and those
(39:21):
experiences in recording, and I thinkthat's just just amazing that we can do
that now. And if only wecould time travel and go back and record
those memories from then that would bethe dream. Yeah. But then at
the same time we have an interestinglens where we have a collective social memory
that's been built by a jury forexample, and shown to us. Thank
(39:43):
you so much for coming on andwalking us through how social memory and orality
was working in medieval Ireland. It'sjust been great to have you on the
podcast. Thank you so much toknow this was a lot of fun.
To find out more about Joe's work, you can visit her website at Joanna
dot macgougin dot com. Her newbook is Social Memory, Reputation, and
the Politics of Death in the MedievalIrish Lordship. Before we go, here's
(40:06):
Peter from Medievalist dot net to tellus what's on the website. What's up,
Peter, A Hey, So we'vebeen posting over the Christmas break and
over New Years and we have anice piece by Emma Cheslick about the cult
of Mary's Hair. Mary's hair,Yeah, the Virgin Mary. Fortunately,
before she ascended to heaven, shehad her haircut, at least that's what
(40:28):
the Catholic religion says. And piecesof that hair have kind of migrated from
Jerusalem to Constantinople to Europe. Youcan even find it in parts of North
America, like little strands of veryhair in relics. And so Emma takes
a look at that journey and whyit's such an important relic in the Middle
Ages. Wow, I think that'sgoing to be worth a read for sure.
(40:49):
Yeah, it's a very fun read. So we have that. Plus
we've been looking back at twenty twentythree, so we have our list of
twenty open access books published online.I love making these of lists. Everything
you think you want to read frommedieval literature to Byzantine history, lots of
fun stuff like that. So wehave that and we are also doing now
camvill Tradition, and you will lookback at those who passed away among the
(41:13):
medievalist community in twenty twenty three.Yeah. I think that's really important work
to make sure that these people arenot forgotten because we had a lot of
giants in the field that passed thisyear, and just so many others that
we're working at smaller colleges and universities, people that just even had like other
jobs, but contributed to the medievalfield. To me, it's kind of
(41:34):
amazing to look back at their careersand what they contributed. Mmmmm, I
think that's excellent work. So thanksfor doing that, Peter. Thanks and
thanks for telling us what's on thewebsite. Thanks. Thank you to all
of you who support my work andthat of other indie historians. Through Medievalist
dot nets Patreon page, patrons haveaccess to all sorts of amazing goodies like
(41:57):
subscriptions to Medieval World magazine, abook club, digital downloads and ad free
versions of Medievalist dot Net and thispodcast. And if you're a member of
the book Club. I hope you'llenjoy my book, How to Live Like
a Monk, which will hopefully getyou started off on the right foot this
year. Courtesy of Abbeville Press.If your New year's resolution is to support
your favorite podcaster through patronage, Ihope you'll visit patreon dot com slash Medievalists
(42:23):
for everything from colonies to felonies.Follow medievalist dot net on Facebook or Twitter
at Medievalists. You can find meDanielle Sibalski across social media at five min
Medievalist or five minute Medievalist, andyou can find my books at all your
favorite bookstores where you can get holdof Chivalry and courtesy medieval manners for a
(42:43):
modern world in hardcover, ebook,and audiobook. Our music is Beyond the
Warriors by Geefrog. Thanks for listening, and have yourself an awesome day.
Hi everyone, and welcome to episodetwo hundred and twenty five and the beginning
of year five of the Medieval Podcast. I'm Danielle Sabalski, also known as
the five Minute Medievalist. A lotof medieval history and history in general,
involves colonization, not just of unoccupiedlands, but of lands in which human
settlements had already been firmly established.Often the stories we tell focus on the
(00:39):
takeovers themselves and the circumstances that ledup to them. But what happens to
the people when the dust settles?How do they manage the clash of two
cultures and often two law codes,and how do the stories they tell about
themselves and each other help them navigatesociety. This week I spoke with doctor
Joanna macgogin about social memory, politics, justice and death in medieval Ireland.
(01:03):
Joe was a copy editor with DragonflyEditorial and an independent scholar whose work spends
Arthurian literature, medieval Irish justice,and reputation in early modern witchcraft trials.
Her new book is Social Memory,Reputation and the Politics of Death in the
Medieval Irish Lordship. Our conversation onhow the justice system worked in Ireland under
(01:23):
medieval English rule. How communities shapedjustice and what this meant when a person
was faced with capital punishment is comingup right after this. But thank you
Joe for joining me to talk aboutIreland and law and orality and all sorts
of amazing stuff. It's great tomeet you and have you on the podcast.
Thank you so much. I'm soexcited to be here. It's my
(01:47):
pleasure. So Ireland we have anEnglish presence there. How did that happen?
How did the English end up inIreland? Well, the short story
is in eleven sixty nine, Jarmadmcmurra. He was the king of Leinster.
He lost his throne to his rivalRory O'Connor, and he begged Henry
(02:07):
the Second of England for help toreclaim his throne. So Henry sent Welsh
and Norman knights to aid him,and they basically enjoyed the Irish countryside so
much they decided to stay and settlethere. You see a lot of Second
Sons going to Ireland to settle becausethere wasn't a lot of land available in
England at the time. I wentto the first sons, so they settled
(02:29):
in Henry. He governed Ireland asa lordship of the crown, so as
a colonial situation. So in theperiod that I studied, mostly the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, it's about onehundred years after colonization. You see the
Irish, the English, Scots,Norse populations all intermingling and integrating. So
(02:52):
it's very much melting pot in Irelandat the time. And where are people
mostly situated. So if we're lookingat the island, where's the English presence
mostly found, they are concentrated onthe east coast, So the eastern seaboard
was mostly English, and then theydid branch inland. We'll see little pockets
of Irish lordships within the English territory, but for the most part that the
(03:15):
eastern seaboard was English and the westernseaboard remained in Irish under Irish control,
so it was never a complete conquest, which is one reason that the medieval
lordship sort of faltered in the LateMiddle Ages because they didn't they didn't have
a complete conquest the Irish or therewere always Irish lordships that resisted colonization and
(03:37):
rebelled against it, so power shifted, a lot, allegiances shifted. There
were some Irish that allied with theEnglish, and there were some that rebelled
and denied colonization. So it doesa lot happening. Yeah, I mean,
well that's expected when you have peopleshowing up on your shores, You're
not really going to necessarily be readyto play nicy with them. Although with
(03:58):
this kind of situation there's always oneof the things you mentioned in the book,
some people that are willing to bendand other people who are not.
So what were some of the justificationsthat the English had for staying and for
thinking that they were able to ruleor should rule over a population that had
already been there for a very longtime. It was power, It was
(04:20):
you know, it was land andpower, and I want to say hubris
a little bit, I mean,which is the case in most you know,
colonization. I think it was anearly idea of empire, you know,
this idea that they could take overthese neighboring countries that they saw as
less than civilized, you know,the Irish. There was a long standing
(04:43):
idea among the English that the Irishr and civilized. There were savages and
the English, as you know,superiors, They had the right to that
land and to show them the lightcan you also often see in other colonial
contexts. So that idea of theIrish as very savage that persisted for a
very long time, and that wasone of the factors in colonization there,
(05:08):
right, And so they're not veryshy about this. In England they're saying
this law. I think it wasEdward the first that said, this law
is basically no law at all.It's just completely savage. So we need
to bring our law and we needto impose it on the people. But
it wasn't that simple, was it. How did the law work when you
had two different laws in the samespace at the same time. It was
(05:30):
a It was a mess. Sothat in theory English common law prevailed in
the areas under English control, butthen you have in the marches and in
the fringes of the colony, youhave sort of a hybrid situation. They
called Marcher law, which wasn't officiallyrecognized like it was in Wales at the
time, but it was a lotof private lordships sort of adopted elements of
(05:56):
the native Gaelic law in legal systemsand legal culture and used it in their
private manner courts. So you sawHaybrid situation. Sometimes they would appeal to
English common law and sometimes they wouldappeal to glic law when it sort of
suited their interests the best. It'soh, yeah, there's a lot going
on there, and it's hard toentangle except for sort of in a local
(06:19):
context. And I imagine over thecourse of your research doing this whole century,
that it's evolving over time. Right, it's still notifying and right,
people are starting to close those doorsinto possible avenues, right, yes,
And I mean common law was evolvingat the time too, you know,
it was more laws were becoming youknow, recorded and writing, but the
(06:42):
common law was sort of still indevelopment. So yeah, it's fascinating to
look at, sort of on theground, how that played out in very
local context. That's what I enjoy. Yeah, yeah, and especially when
you're looking at these individual cases andyou have these characters coming up that are
super fun and do you want toget into those short But we are talking
or we're going to be talking soonwhen we're talking about court cases, especially
(07:04):
about the importance of oral culture.And we know that the Irish were doing
amazing work when it came to creatingbooks at this time, So It's not
like literacy is unknown to the Irishpopulation and then the English show up and
then everyone's literate. But can yougive us a sense of what the culture
was like in Ireland among the nativeIrish when it comes to orality and literacy,
(07:29):
How is that working among that populationThat I didn't look at as closely,
So I don't know if I canspeak to it as as coherently as
maybe my advisor could. He doesbook at Brendan Kane, he does study
the Irish what was happening in theGaelic Irish societies. But I would say
it was very sophisticated. I mean, we had at that point we had
(07:51):
Irish poets composing written poetry, wehad you know, a lot of the
laws were written down. I meanit was I think, on a par
with what we see happening in mainlandEurope. That you know, literacy was
just and of course, I meanthe early Irish monks were responsible for so
much of European literacy and creating manuscriptsand all that. So it was a
(08:13):
very learned society. Absolutely, therewas a lot happening there with taking a
reality and committing it to manuscripts.Yeah, and One of the things that
you mentioned in the book is thatone of the bits of Irish culture that
starts to infuse itself into the Englishcolonial culture there is the Bardic poetry,
especially if people are taking on thisway of telling stories that was already in
(08:37):
Ireland before the English showed up,and integrating that. And sometimes the people
in England are not super happy aboutthat, right, But who wouldn't want,
you know, a barred on staffto sing their praises, to come
to their dinners and entertain Like Ithink it's Yeah, it's brilliant to see
the English adopting those elements. Yeah, that would be the type of thing
(09:00):
that I'd want to have in mycastle, no matter what the kid the
King over the Sea had to sayabout it, you know, words about
me exactly. So one of thephrases that you use in this book,
especially when it's coming to legal mattersand sort of the evolution of how literacy
is happening at this time, you'retalking about pragmatic literacy. So what do
(09:22):
you mean by this? Pragmatic literacyis sort of literate practices, so that
the kind of literacy that someone wouldacquire in the course of everyday business.
So someone might not necessarily be ableto read, but they could keep accounting
book. They knew the importance ofarchiving important documents, that those kind of
(09:43):
practices. That's what you know,pragmatic literacy was, so they not if
they couldn't read, they could stillrecognize the importance of the written word,
the written record. Yeah. AndI think one of the things that's really
important that you say in the bookis was if somebody is peasant class,
we shouldn't assume that they were illiterateby any means, because they might well
(10:05):
be educated, or they might havethis pragmatic literacy as you say, right,
Yes, yeah, they could.They signed documents, they consult the
notaries, they understood all of youknow the importance of that, Yeah,
which is important to remember. Soyour book works around law, as we're
talking about, but you really centerit on death. Why did you pick
(10:26):
death as the sort of cohesive placeto start to talk about these things?
Well, it took is most dissertationsdo a very meandering path to my final
product. I started looking at deathand dying and what kind of interested me
was what happens when someone dies unexpectedlyor violently or what happens when they're hanged?
(10:50):
You know, what are the legaldimensions there? What does the coroner
do? Why is the corner acoveted power to have? So all these
questions sort of steered me towards deathas the framework, and as I dove
into the sources, I saw thatsocial memory was so important in all of
these contexts and the legal culture.The foundation of this legal culture was very
(11:13):
very much oral, and you know, social memory was a guiding force in
this legal culture. So it justthey these two strands came together, the
death and dying and the aftermath ofdeath and what happens to social memory as
literate practices are taking root? Howis social memory incorporated into this legal culture?
What role does it have in decidingwho who faces the gallows? You
(11:37):
know, questions like that, Theyjust sort of emerged as this interwoven braid.
Yeah, it's very hard when you'redoing any history. It's it's sort
of untangled things so that they clearlycome apart, so it all works togethering
and nice thee in this book,I think you've done a good job of
(11:58):
trying to section off one bit andtalk think about that. So let's go
back to the coroner. We stillhave the office of the coroner today in
medieval Ireland. Who's the corner?How do they get that job and what
is the job? Well, theywere elected and they were usually you know,
local men of some prominence, buta lot of men did not want
(12:20):
the job because there wasn't a lotof glory in it. But it was
very important to the crown. Thesewere royal coroners and they were important because
they were responsible for basically collecting revenue. They would take the property of felons
that would be forfeited to them andas no agents of the crown, they
would give it to the king tohold and that was very important and that's
(12:41):
one reason why it was i thinka very powerful position. But you also
see private coroners on private manors.The Archbishop of Dublin had his bailiff foot
served as corner even though he wasn'tsupposed to technically, But there isn't a
lot of evidence for this in Ireland. So my focus was on the royal
coeigner and how he served the kingand how people contested his role. Right,
(13:05):
So you're talking about the corner beinginvolved in felonies. Were they only
involved with the death part or werethey involved with any felonies even if they
didn't involve visiting a body or somethinglike that. They had other jobs as
well. They would hear abjurations fromfelons in sanctuary, they would take property
(13:26):
of convicted felons. Their main rolewas investigating deaths, conducting in quests and
things like that, but they didhave they did have other jobs as well.
Okay, so the corner is aboutto investigate a death. There's a
body. Let's law and order itfor a minute. There's a body,
the coroner is called, what dothey have to do? Well? The
(13:46):
best evidence we have for that comesfrom Dublin in the Laws and Usage As.
There's a passage from the early fourteenthcentury about sort of what to do,
you know, if you find abody, So the coroner should be
some immediate lea as soon as thebody is discovered. But what we see
in Dublin is instructions for people beforethe corners on the scene. So if
(14:09):
a person, if the you know, a head of household, discovers a
dead body, what does he do? He is supposed to summon his neighbors,
twelve neighbors at least if he canask them to vouch for him that
he didn't do this and none ofhis family did this. This is just
a dead body he found, andthen they were sort of supposed to establish
a collective truth before the coroner arriveson the scene. Once the coroner arrives,
(14:30):
he must view the body. Itwas illegal to bury a body without
view of the coroner, and thenhe would conduct his inquest into what happened.
The jurors would be neighbors as well, so they would have ideally the
best knowledge of the people involved inthe crime, or you know, if
they knew who the victim was,if they knew who the killer was,
(14:50):
they were the ones to consult.So the jurors, sorry, the coroner's
inquest would be the first step inestablishing that truth about what happened. And
so they bring the jury together eventually, and they've actually written down those oaths
that a juror is supposed to take, and as you mentioned, the sort
of oath that the person who findsthe body is supposed to take. So
(15:11):
what do these oaths involve? Arethey the same as you see today,
like where you put a hand onthe Bible and you say you're going to
tell the truth if you're a witness, Do they have the same elements?
What are they like, these oathsthat the jury has to take. So
the jury, yeah, they would. They would be sort of a formal
I swear to tell the truth,the whole truth, and you know,
an early version of that, butthe truth would be sort of to the
(15:33):
best of their knowledge, you know, based on what they know of local
gossip and the person's reputation and thingslike that. So yeah, it was
rather formal. The laws and usagesof Dublin records, you know what exactly
they're supposed to say. There's awhole script for the coroner's inquest, but
I haven't found elsewhere in this kindof detail. I know in England they
(15:54):
have similar, similar things happening,but I haven't seen this, this sort
of very straightforward script that they weresupposed to follow, and that gives you
order an organization to the inquest.It helps provide guidance to both the coroner
and the jurors. Yeah, andI think one of the things as you're
talking, it's occurring to me isthat it makes it seem very formalized in
(16:17):
that we have conducted this properly becausewe have followed this formula. It's not
just people saying something. Do youthink that's an accurate characterization of how it's
working. Yes, absolutely, Yeah. If they follow the script to the
t, then it sort of absolvesthem of any wrongdoing. And especially with
the head of household who discovers thebody, if he doesn't follow that script,
(16:38):
he's in trouble. You know thathe can be prosecuted for it if
he doesn't follow that. So it'sdefinitely there for them to follow. By
the book, that was really interestingto me because it is the unwritten law
that's been codified now and they catchthat oral element in the written law.
Yeah, and I love seeing isfinding that and the you know, signs
(17:00):
of morality in these written sources.Yeah, because behind the scenes, it's
so different from what we are expectingin modern times where they're supposed to be
objective and not know the people.But here, one of the points that
you're making in the book is thatthey're building a collective social memory about this
by all contributing what they know aboutit and talking about it. And one
(17:22):
of the concepts that you're mentioning inthe book is about fama. So can
you tell us about what this is. Yes, this was a sort of
a universal concept across medieval Europe.This idea of reputation was the most important
thing. It was prized, thisidea of you know, what a person's
word is worth. It's it's theirreputation, It's how they hold themselves among
(17:45):
their community, how they're respected.It decides everything. Fama can be everything,
it's just. It decides how you'retreated in court. It decides,
you know, whether you're hanged fora crime or not. It's so important.
And this idea that jurors, itwas jurors who aren't familiar with someone's
fama that had that power to decidethese cases, rather than I tinerant justices
(18:08):
who they didn't have access to thisyou know local knowledge that they do.
So they rely very much these youknow, high colonial government authorities. They
had to rely on this very localknowledge of a person's fama to make their
decisions. So it empowers jurors verymuch, and that's I don't think they
get enough credit for that in thehistoriography. I think we often see,
(18:30):
you know, these colonial elites governingthe lordship, but they depend so much
on local jurors knowledge, their knowledgeof a person's fama to really understand,
you know, what was happening throughoutthe lordship and who the Irish enemies were
and who the Irish allies were,Like this is they depend so much on
these local chairs. So I wonderfrom the question, no, but this
(18:55):
is where I wanted to go withthis. So one of the lines that
you have in the book is basicallythat is controlling the justice of the community
so that it is like a communitybuilt justice. How did you see this
reflected in the sentences that came downfrom juries. Was everybody just sent to
the executioner right away? No,that would make a colorful story, though
(19:18):
it would, but they did.Did you see the sharers weighing fauma in
circumstance? You know, social context, all of these factors of relationships,
social networks, all of these werefactors and their decisions. So you would
see an homicide if the victim wasknown to be an Irish enemy of the
king, you know, it wouldbe welcomed and rewarded. That was not
(19:41):
a problem. If the victim wasa common robber who just you know,
constantly raided towns and just caused problemsall the time, that's fine, we're
not going to punish the killer becausethey benefited the peace of the community by
taking this personal equations. And thenyou see the flip side. You see
the reputation of the killer is makinga huge difference as well. So if
(20:06):
the person who committed the crime isknown to be a common robber, a
constant, persistent problem in the community, then they would most likely hang.
But if that person committed a crimeout of you know, starvation, if
he robbed a home because he wasyou know, it was a time of
famine and he was driven to it, but otherwise had a very solid reputation
(20:26):
in the community, then he wouldusually be acquitted. So it just,
you know, so much hangs onthe reputation within the community mm hm.
And how well they know each other, as in the people that you want
on the jury are family members orwho know you? How does this work
in a colonial context? So sayyou're an Irish person who is living under
(20:51):
the rule of the English and youhave to call a jury. Who are
you going to call it to beyour witnesses? Who do you think would
work best for a person in thissituation? Well, I mean it depends
on proximity. If you're talking atcriminal trial, it would be the closest
neighbors, so it would be theperson that knew you. They knew every
feud you know, in that immediateneighborhood. So there wasn't, you know,
(21:15):
total control on who sits on thejury. If you're very well connected,
you want those people that know youbest to be on the jury.
The chances of acquiddal would be muchmuch greater. It's interesting in one of
the jurys we see it was atCastle Kevin. It was an inquisition into
the Archbishop of Dublin's customs and thismanner. It was at the foothills of
(21:38):
the Wicklow Mountains, a very Irisharea, so you see Irish names running
through the testimony, and you alsosee Irish names among the jurors. So
that's sort of an outlier among theinquisitions. But that's a really great example
of how the Irish really participated injustice as well. Yeah, and I
think that that is one of thearguments you make as well, is that
(22:03):
that participation in things like justice orcommunity increased your FAMA, and it was
something that you wanted to make surewas part of the equation. Right,
So what kind of people would getgreater reputations in colonized Ireland amongst the colonizers.
Oh but that's a wow, that'sa really good question. I think
it basically comes down to just treatingyour neighbors well. And we see that
(22:26):
again in the laws and usages.We see that the head of household,
you know, must not verbally abusehis neighbors that he has assembled, because
that will come back to haunt him. So this idea of neighborliness, cooperation,
community policing, not that every youknow, neighborhood was all you know,
rosy and comfortable and cozy and bestfriends. Absolutely not. There was
(22:48):
also, you know, there werealways feuds. But this idea that you
should treat your neighbors well because theywill it will help you in the end,
and in terms of community policing,it will help to achieve justice es
for the whole community, so thatthe greater good. It was so important,
you know, watch your language,don't abuse people with your tongue.
That was a big part of it, and in fact, that led to
(23:11):
a lot of crimes in men's laughter, didn't it. Can you tell us
a little bit about the ways thatpeople might be starting a feud by throwing
insults. And I'm especially thinking ofwhat you noticed about the gendered insults that
people are throwing out. Yes,the insults. That was so much fun
to read and write about the wordsthat they used. So you see insults,
(23:33):
you know, often with the rootcause of violence and ended in deaths
in the court roles, and theywere gendered in the sense that, you
know, kind of the way youwould expect that women were accused of being
loose and their virtue would be underattack. That would be sort of the
most common insults thrown at them.And for men who would be you know,
(23:53):
their honor, their quality of work. I mean, we see an
insult towards a tailor. There wasa tavern brawl in thirteen eleven, I
think where someone was drinking and heinsulted the local tailor and that started a
tavern brawl and it ended in death. They thought someone got clubbed on the
head and it ended that way.Just the idea of attacking someone's sort of
(24:17):
overall reputation and sense of honor.It was very important to defend your honor
in the time, of course.I mean that's all over, you know,
you're at ball over England as well, but you see it happening in
Ireland as well. Well. Oneof the things that you mentioned was today
we think of homicide as being theworst thing you can do. It is
the most heavily punished. But youmentioned that in Ireland it's outrageous crimes.
(24:40):
So crimes that are going to makethe whole community feel outrage that would be
something more like stealing from the church, where you could get off on a
homicide, for doing military service orpaying Can you tell us more about how
that fell out, sort of howthe crimes were looked at by the community,
like which ones were more important.Yeah, So if you look at
the kind of crimes that ended incapital punishment, you see crimes against property
(25:03):
most often. And part of thisis because at the time crimes against property
were crimes against the king, thatthey were taken more seriously, whereas homicides
they were often excusable in many contexts. For instance, if someone was defending
their honor or self defense, selfdefense usually ended in acquittal, and because
the jurors knew the situation, theyknew the people at play, they could
(25:27):
vouch for, yes, this happenedin self defense and they would be acquitted.
So homicides. You often see peoplepaying a fine to get out of
homicides. That was just sort ofmore common. And the pardons you asked
about. The pardons, people couldrely on their social networks to purchase pardons
from the king. And this wasthe period where as was under Edward the
(25:49):
First, who was operating wars inScotland. He was dealing with the hostile
Irish and the rebellious English and Ireland. He had a lot of wars going
on many different fronts, needed soldiers. He granted pardons, you know,
just very an EGOLDI pickledatist if youwanted one, if you had the means
in the social networks, it wasvery easy to purchase a pardon for pretty
(26:12):
much any crime that would give themimmunity, and often it would be in
return for military service in Scotland orIreland. So you do see some very
dastardly crimes go completely unpunished for thisreason. And interesting, this was sort
of a weird thing that I sawis that these people, even if they
(26:32):
had this ill reputation, this negativefama, they were still able to rely
on their social networks to secure thesepardons. So that was one area where
FAMA sort of didn't matter that thispurchase of a pardon could overrule a negative
FAMA. So that's one instance wherethe written records sort of trumps the social
(26:52):
memory of this person's crimes and thereputation that follows that person. Yeah,
I was talking about Gallows with Kennethdug In not too long ago, and
we were talking a lot about howsomeone might be exiled or take sanctuary or
that kind of thing instead of beinghanged, and that this solved the problem
in the same way that military servicesolve is a problem in that that person
(27:15):
is out of the community and they'reout of their hair and they've solved the
problem by not making more trouble.So did you think that that's how people
saw it at the time, Like, if you're doing military service, at
least you're not in the community anymore. That's good enough for us. Yes.
Absolutely, it brings peace to thecommunity, and that was sort of
the goal right in the end thatthey wanted. And I think you also,
(27:37):
it's complicated when jurors know the peoplecharged with crimes or they know the
victims, and they have to makethat decision about Okay, do we send
them to the gallows or not.I mean, that's a horrible decision to
have to make in any context.So I think it was there was some
relief that there were these alternative paths. Also that yes, okay, send
(27:59):
them to go. That absolves usof having to make that decision. Yeah,
for sure. And you do havea chart in the book that mentions
the number of hangings and some years, I mean most years it barely gets
into the double digits. Some yearsthere's only two. And I think that
would really surprise people. And Ithink one of the reasons is hesitation to
(28:19):
do that to somebody that you know. One is that you could get a
pardon. These are all arguments thatyou mentioned, but one that you also
mention is that nobody wants to bean executioner. So let's stop for a
second and talk about who's the executionerwho's doing this job? Because it's not
a pretty job. Who ends updoing this for the county? It's not
(28:41):
a pretty job. And I couldn'tfind a lot about it in the sources
I really wanted to. In latersources, early modern you see more of
that, and you see the executionersbrought from England that would do that job
because the Irish did not want to, or the Old English as they were
called at the time, did notwant to either. But in the medieval
(29:02):
period there's not a lot about whothe executioners were. There's some evidence that
people were sort of pushed into thejob. In England, you see sometimes
it's a part of the terms ofrent that yes, you can rent this
property for me, but you willalso serve as executioner for my private court.
That happens, and it's likely thatprobably also happened in Ireland. I
(29:23):
haven't found the sources to support that, but I think it's a likely scenario.
It would normally be the English thatwould do the executions. Yeah,
it's horrible. I can't even imaginebeing enlisted to do that job. If
it's you're just the most likely person, or we have the most leverage on
you through rents or whatever, youhave to do the job. And it
(29:47):
makes a lot of sense when Iwas speaking with Kenneth about sometimes people walking
away from the gallows and just kindof not noticing that the people get cut
down by someone else, because it'snot something that most people would want to
do, especially to someone they knowthe community. Yes, and I think
there was. I think there wasan instance of just sort of random passers
by being enlisted to do it.Also just like oh, here's a stranger
(30:08):
in the community, we'll get themto do it. That would happen.
Also, Yeah, the hangings themselvesare not the big public spectacles they would
become, you know later in theearly modern period. They were very much
sort of let's just do it quietly, and it was public in the sense
it would take place in a publicgreen, a public place, but it
wasn't would it didn't draw big crowds. Nobody really wanted to see it,
(30:30):
and they would leave them hanging normallyfor you know, maybe a matter of
days until someone took pity and tookthem down. It seems so foreign to
the way we do things now.Yeah, and yet if you think about
the entire context, it makes somuch more sense than the thing that you
might see in media where people arejust so eagerly seeing someone hang. It's
(30:51):
like usually, I think when youthink about it being someone in the community
or someone that you've had to passjudgment on, of course you don't want
to be there for that. Yeah, it makes sure dark. It's very
dark, and it's kind of fascinatingthat it did become this spectacle where they
would people would be, you know, open the pubs and they'd be it'd
be almost like a I don't entertainment, it's wow, Yeah, it's dark.
(31:15):
I think it almost has to bea stranger in those context skids personally,
I don't think humans are necessarily builtfor wanting to see that, and
that's a good thing. I thinkit's a good thing too. So how
did ethnicity play out in convictions?Because I think that you were looking into
like somebody with an Irish last name, Are they more likely to be convicted?
(31:37):
Are they more likely to be executed? How did that play out in
the records that you looked at.Well, I found that Irish they were
not more likely to be convicted,because again that would just come down to
their reputation in the community, butthey were more likely to hang for their
crimes, which is interesting and I'mnot exactly sure of the reasons why the
ethnicity is so. It was oftenso murky because the Irish could purchase the
(32:04):
power to use English law or tobe protected under English common law, and
justice would sort of be the samefor them as it would be for you.
Know an English person, but sofew people had the means to purchase
those and so few written records existthat it was social memory basically, that
that would sort out who was Irishand who was not. Dependent on local
(32:24):
knowledge and social memory again, andit was complicated because you would see Irish
people adopting English names to sort ofpass try to pass themselves off as English
without that you know, record thatthey had the power of English law.
And you see killers claiming that theirvictims were Irish so they would secure a
lesser punishment and hope that the jurywould back them up. Or you see
(32:47):
juries actually protecting you know, thekiller because they were well connected. There
was one one murderer. His communitysort of helped him get out of several
homicides charges, and in one casehe claimed his victim was Irish. The
coroner's inquest, the corners the questjury also said the victim was Irish,
(33:08):
but then a later trial jury said, no, this victim was English and
it should have been a harsher penaltyfor this murder. So it's complicated.
It's the ethnicity is it relied somuch on what the jurors present as the
truth. So they had the powerto create the truth that they wanted.
And one of the things that youmentioned that I really thought about and I
(33:30):
think is really interesting if we thinkabout it in a modern context when it
comes to like social media and cancelingpeople and stuff like that, where if
you're constructing a social memory of aperson and their fumba, it's always in
the present in that everyone might beaware of past events and things like that,
but it's always, I think,a lot more balanced towards how are
(33:51):
they acting in the community in thelast year, in the last two years,
rather than what they may have doneas a youth. Do you think
that is again, like an accuratecharacterization of how they're looking at it.
I think it is because fama doeschange over time. You know, you
can be redeemed within your community forthings that you've done. What I found
really interesting was that even ethnicity couldbe fluid, and what mattered was their
(34:15):
ethnicity at the time of their death. So they would say, the jurors
would say, at the time ofhis death, this person was taken to
be Irish, which implies that likeprior to their death, they could have
been considered something else. And it'svery strange and I don't quite understand it,
you know, how in this ethnicitycould be fluid. Just it's a
different idea of ethnicity than we havein the modern period, and it's something
(34:37):
I'd like to explore more. Imean, I can see how it would
be fluid in a sense where someonewho is English might adopt some Gaelic culture,
but they would always be English.They would still always be English in
the end. Someone who's Irish thathas access to English law, they would
still be Irish in the end.So I don't know. This idea of
(34:58):
fluidity is just something It's fascinating andinteresting and something I just want to sort
of try to untangle. I guessthat's my project. Well it's an ethnicity
be fluid. We don't see itthat way. Really. Yeah, it
might be sort of analogous to whatis the most recent box they checked on
the census. You know, thereare lots of people who are biracial,
(35:20):
especially in places where there's a historyof colonization, where you know, you
can only check one box on thesense is what is your background? What
are you calling it? And maybethey're thinking of it fluidity in those terms
where maybe you have two parents thatare one is English and one is Irish,
and how are they most relating tothe community within this context. Maybe
it's more like that, but Idon't know that that's a really good point.
(35:43):
It could be. It could belike that, and we see new
categories arising, you know, asas a population's mingle more. Yeah,
it's it's really really interesting and Ithink also complicated by you know, you
have Scots people living in Ireland,you have the original in the Norse,
the vikings that were there before theEnglish came. It was literally a melting
(36:04):
pot, so there was all sortsof the ancestry was very blended. So
at the point that I look atit's so hard to entangle who who is
who that those written records, youknow, it's complicated. Well, this
is a question that if you addressin the book, I really need to
go back and look at it.But you do mention there's a time out
of mind and there's a time that'sin the minds of man and quotation works.
(36:30):
Do you have a sense that thememories of elders had any sort of
more weight than the memories of justeverybody sort of an idea of everybody knows
this? Is there a different placefor the memories of elders. When it
comes to the social construct of memoryor somebody's place in the community. Did
you get a sense of that orit's not really super clear. It's not
(36:52):
super clear. But there was oneinstance where that did come through very clearly,
and that was in the writing ofthe Boundaries of Dublin. So this
was the perambulation they would do regularly. It was a custom that they did,
and we have sort of scattered recordsof it over you know, two
hundred years or so, the recordsof the writing in one of them,
(37:14):
and it's pretty late, i wantto say, sixteenth century. Maybe my
memory is a bit fuzzy because thatwasn't the sort of a major part of
the book. But you do seethat they consult the elders. It's a
writing party. It's it's a partyon horseback, literally just traversing the boundaries
as they're written out in the elevenninety two charter from Prince John. And
(37:34):
they specifically stay in this record ofthe writing that they're consulting the elders for
their memories, and the elders wouldsay, yes, this place was formerly
known as this in previous years,but now it's called this, and they
could have sort of charted the changesthat they've seen over their lifetime. So
I thought that that was really interesting. That's where the elders really shine through.
(37:55):
And you see scattered in other sourcesthis, you know, references to
a usage. So Dublin's Laws andUsagees is one one example that in the
prenable it says these laws were followedin ancient times. And it's very important
to acknowledge these ancient roots of thewritten laws because it gives a more authority
(38:15):
and more legitimacy. So in thewriting you see the elder sort of playing
that role. They're offering their legitimacyand an authority to this writing to establish
these boundaries and reinforce these cities' boundaries. I think that that is such a
beautiful way of looking at it,and maybe something that is such a natural
part of our lives that we forgetabout it, that we are looking backwards
(38:37):
to elders telling us how things havechanged. And when we think about history
like it is all a construct thatwe're building together and we can disagree on
it and it'll change over time.And this idea of social memory, I
think is very beautiful looking at ourown lives as well as looking back to
the past. Absolutely, and thisidea that now we can draw from oral
(39:00):
histories to learn that and to acknowledgethat past. And you know, we
don't have that for the medieval periodunfortunately. We have sort of an idea
of the oral history as they presented. We have it in writing, but
it is that what they've actually said, We don't know. But now we
do have the benefit of people recordingoral histories and getting those memories and those
(39:21):
experiences in recording, and I thinkthat's just just amazing that we can do
that now. And if only wecould time travel and go back and record
those memories from then that would bethe dream. Yeah. But then at
the same time we have an interestinglens where we have a collective social memory
that's been built by a jury forexample, and shown to us. Thank
(39:43):
you so much for coming on andwalking us through how social memory and orality
was working in medieval Ireland. It'sjust been great to have you on the
podcast. Thank you so much toknow this was a lot of fun.
To find out more about Joe's work, you can visit her website at Joanna
dot macgougin dot com. Her newbook is Social Memory, Reputation, and
the Politics of Death in the MedievalIrish Lordship. Before we go, here's
(40:06):
Peter from Medievalist dot net to tellus what's on the website. What's up,
Peter, A Hey, So we'vebeen posting over the Christmas break and
over New Years and we have anice piece by Emma Cheslick about the cult
of Mary's Hair. Mary's hair,Yeah, the Virgin Mary. Fortunately,
before she ascended to heaven, shehad her haircut, at least that's what
(40:28):
the Catholic religion says. And piecesof that hair have kind of migrated from
Jerusalem to Constantinople to Europe. Youcan even find it in parts of North
America, like little strands of veryhair in relics. And so Emma takes
a look at that journey and whyit's such an important relic in the Middle
Ages. Wow, I think that'sgoing to be worth a read for sure.
(40:49):
Yeah, it's a very fun read. So we have that. Plus
we've been looking back at twenty twentythree, so we have our list of
twenty open access books published online.I love making these of lists. Everything
you think you want to read frommedieval literature to Byzantine history, lots of
fun stuff like that. So wehave that and we are also doing now
camvill Tradition, and you will lookback at those who passed away among the
(41:13):
medievalist community in twenty twenty three.Yeah. I think that's really important work
to make sure that these people arenot forgotten because we had a lot of
giants in the field that passed thisyear, and just so many others that
we're working at smaller colleges and universities, people that just even had like other
jobs, but contributed to the medievalfield. To me, it's kind of
(41:34):
amazing to look back at their careersand what they contributed. Mmmmm, I
think that's excellent work. So thanksfor doing that, Peter. Thanks and
thanks for telling us what's on thewebsite. Thanks. Thank you to all
of you who support my work andthat of other indie historians. Through Medievalist
dot nets Patreon page, patrons haveaccess to all sorts of amazing goodies like
(41:57):
subscriptions to Medieval World magazine, abook club, digital downloads and ad free
versions of Medievalist dot Net and thispodcast. And if you're a member of
the book Club. I hope you'llenjoy my book, How to Live Like
a Monk, which will hopefully getyou started off on the right foot this
year. Courtesy of Abbeville Press.If your New year's resolution is to support
your favorite podcaster through patronage, Ihope you'll visit patreon dot com slash Medievalists
(42:23):
for everything from colonies to felonies.Follow medievalist dot net on Facebook or Twitter
at Medievalists. You can find meDanielle Sibalski across social media at five min
Medievalist or five minute Medievalist, andyou can find my books at all your
favorite bookstores where you can get holdof Chivalry and courtesy medieval manners for a
(42:43):
modern world in hardcover, ebook,and audiobook. Our music is Beyond the
Warriors by Geefrog. Thanks for listening, and have yourself an awesome day.
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.