Kilkenny, Statute of (1366), the most ambitious legislation produced by the medieval Irish
parliament. Its 36 clauses cover a variety of topics but they are remembered mainly for their preamble with its deprecation of the increasing
‘Gaelicization’ of the English colony and for those clauses aimed at halting and reversing that trend. These required all living within the colony to use the English language and English personal names and to ride their horses in the English manner. They also required the use of English methods of dispute settlement, by litigation in the courts of the lordship rather than by self‐help through distraint or violent retaliation in accordance with
march or native Irish law. Further ‘contamination’ of the colony by the native Irish from outside the area of the lordship was to be avoided by prohibiting their presentment to ecclesiastical benefices within the lordship and their admission to religious houses, and by the prohibition of the creation of social relationships between colonists and native Irish through marriage, standing as godparents,
fostering, and concubinage. Even minstrels and other entertainers who came from outside the lordship were no longer to be allowed to travel freely within it.
The legislators did not expect the colony to enjoy peaceful relations with its Irish neighbours. Other clauses, therefore, were concerned with making proper preparations for future wars. Nonmartial games were prohibited, as was the export of horses or armour to the native Irish. There were to be regular monthly reviews of all men of military age and their weapons. Other clauses were aimed at avoiding unnecessary wars caused by breaches of truces and treaties and by the conclusion of treaties whose clauses did too little to avoid future conflict. Wars were only to be commenced after proper deliberation and by the colony as a whole (not by individual counties), and peace was also to be made only after proper consultation. Since the colony was also threatened with disorder by internal forces, other measures prohibited colonists retaining
kerns,
hobelars, and
idlemen in their service within the colony or supporting other kinds of malefactor, and allowed the disregarding of jurisdictional boundaries when felons were being pursued. Still other clauses made a variety of reforms in local and central administration and attempted to create a system for regulating the price of imported goods and the payment of labourers.
Much of the legislation was not novel. As many as 20 of the 36 chapters of the statute were reenactments (some in identical words) of ordinances enacted by a great council at Kilkenny in 1351 during the period Thomas
Rokeby was chief governor of the lordship. Others re‐enacted clauses from a 1357 English ordinance for Ireland. An older generation of scholars saw this legislation as marking a major turning point in the history of the medieval lordship, when its rulers finally turned their backs on the native Irish and excluded them from the colony. More recent writers have emphasized its essentially defensive nature, as a reaction to the growing threat posed to the colony by the cultural and military encroachments of the resurgent Irish. Its wider European context is the series of measures adopted in many states in the aftermath of the first attacks of the
Black Death and intended to preserve the existing social and economic order. Within a few years licences were being granted by the government for breaches of some of its regulations but the statute was re‐enacted on several occasions during the 15th century and unlicensed breaches continued to be investigated and punished until the legislation was repealed in the parliament of 1613–15.
Paul Brand
