liberties

liberties, a term applied to Anglo‐Norman lordships in Ireland that exercised jurisdiction normally reserved to the crown. Since the invasion was a seigniorial rather than a royal enterprise, Henry II permitted Strongbow (Leinster), de Lacy (Meath), and de Courcy (Ulster) to exercise full jurisdiction within their lordships.

Initially no limitation was imposed, but in 1197 John, while still lord of Ireland, seized the temporalities of the see of Leighlin, thereby affirming his lordship over the temporalities of the church even when they lay within the liberties. This claim was affirmed in John's charter restoring the liberty of Ulster in 1205, followed three years later by the additional reservation to the crown courts of four ‘royal’ pleas: rape, arson, treasure trove, and forestall. The exclusions were significant. First, by reserving church lands to his immediate jurisdiction, the king excluded the great lords from having a say in the appointment of bishops. Second, by retaining the pleas he underlined the inferiority of private jurisdictions. Third, a writ of right could remove actions begun in a liberty court to a royal court, with the result that the legal system in the former, unlike the marcher lordships in Wales, had to conform to the norms of common law. In effect, the liberty courts became extensions of the royal system of justice. John's measures ensured that the Irish liberties, which, unchecked, would have followed the Welsh pattern, developed more on the lines of the English immunities.

Royal officials were normally excluded from the liberties, where the lord's peace prevailed, not the king's. Courts were summoned, and writs ran, in his name. At times in the 13th century it would have been possible to travel from Hook Head in Wexford to Dunluce on the coast of Antrim passing through only one narrow strip of royal territory in Louth. Some Henrician liberties were subsequently converted into royal counties (Kildare, Carlow, and Kilkenny), while new ones, like Tipperary and Kerry, were created as political favours in the 14th century. Yet even those that endured were subject to periodic forfeiture, as happened in Tipperary in 1331, 1415, 1462, and 1494. They were, moreover, routinely reintegrated into the country system during the minority of the lord.

Basically, the liberties were privately governed counties that formed part of the system of royal administration. The chief official of the liberty, the seneschal, had to report to the exchequer at the same terms as the royal sheriff, and had to swear to serve the king faithfully. Like the sheriff, he was subject to fines and liable for debts due to the crown.

Internally, the liberties were organized like counties. The seneschal, as chief officer, presided over the liberty court, while the sheriff presided over the county court and the sessions of the tourn. He was assisted by serjeants and coroners in each cantred. In lieu of royal officials, chancellors and treasurers were regularly appointed. In the 15th century a justice of the liberty of Tipperary, who presumably discharged some of the legal functions of the seneschal, appears for the first time.

see also palatine jurisdiction.

Bibliography

Otway‐Ruthven, J. , ‘Anglo‐Irish Shire Government in the Thirteenth Century’, Irish Historical Studies, 5 (1946)
Otway‐Ruthven, J. A History of Medieval Ireland (2nd edn., 1980)

Revd Canon C. A. Empey