I

The foundation of this enquiry is a document emblematic of Ireland’s difficult archival past. On 30 June 1922, the Public Record Office of Ireland was destroyed at the beginning of the Irish Civil War. The ‘greatest cultural tragedy of twentieth-century Ireland’, it has caused a sense of trauma that Irish historians have in the generations since struggled to overcome.Footnote ¹² A contemporary insight into the devastation caused can be found in a memorandum written on 3 July 1922 by the historian Martin Joseph Blake: ‘All the priceless Public Records at the Public Record Office have their lamentably perished; not a vestige of them remains; an irreparable calamity.’Footnote ¹³ Among the archival casualties were the Irish plea rolls, court rolls produced by the central judicial courts of the English lordship: the common bench and the king’s bench, as well as the courts of the itinerant justices.Footnote ¹⁴ The roll for the king’s bench from 1394–5 was, therefore, lost.Footnote ¹⁵ Fortunately, the archives of Trinity College, Dublin holds a certified copy made by the Public Record Office of Ireland in 1929 of an earlier certified copy they had created in 1902 — at the request of the aforementioned Martin Joseph Blake — of an extract from this very same plea roll.Footnote ¹⁶ I have not yet been able to track down the original certified copy which was deposited in the Public Record Office of Ireland, now the National Archives of Ireland. Thus, I have used the 1929 version as the exemplar for the following discussion. Correspondence relating to the depositing of this copy at Trinity College, Dublin can be found alongside the document, along with certified copies of several different documents also deposited by Blake.

This valuable extract bears the following description: ‘Grant of a pardon to Henry Blake from Plea Roll No. 307 18–19 Rich^d II [1394–95].’ The document itself supplies further details: that the extract was a portion of the plea roll, that the roll was part of the Record Tower Collection; that the case described within was from St Hilary’s term; while the addition of the word Rex or ‘king’ likely indicates that this was inscribed into the plea roll to indicate that this case directly affected the king’s interests or rights.Footnote ¹⁷ A note stating ‘m.8’ indicates that this extract was taken from the eighth membrane of the roll and a further note alongside the extract simply states ‘Dublin’. Blake corresponded on this extract with Edmund Curtis, a medieval Irish historian at Trinity College, Dublin, who subsequently printed an edition of the text in 1935.Footnote ¹⁸ However, despite its publication nearly a century ago, and scattered references to the revolt by various historians, the events described within the extract have not yet been subjected to a detailed analysis.Footnote ¹⁹ This is more surprising when we consider its contents.

The extract records judicial proceedings against a man named Henry Blake of Galway. It begins with details of a judicial session held before the king’s justices in the parts of Connacht at which Blake does not appear to have been present. It then proceeds to the appearance of Blake before the king’s bench in Dublin on Thursday, 4 March 1395 in the custody of the court’s marshal. In response to the charges laid against him previously by the justices in Connacht, he stated that he had received a royal pardon and produced for the court his letters of pardon from Richard II. These letters of pardon were transcribed into the court roll and were dated 20 February 1395 at Dublin and witnessed by the king himself. Blake was consequently released by the royal court.Footnote ²⁰ It is the first section of the extract which will be the focus of this article. It records that on Wednesday, 14 June 1391, Milo Corr, bishop of Clonmacnoise, and Thomas Hill, justices of the lord king in the parts of Connacht held session at villam de roba or Ballinrobe in modern county Mayo.Footnote ²¹ Here, they heard an explosive tale of rebellion and the role played by Henry Blake in this revolt. The document claims:

And nor was this the end of matters, for the document goes on to state that:

This document records a seemingly unusual event in late medieval Ireland: the revolt by the inhabitants of an English town against the English crown. The recipient of their new loyalty was William (or Uilleag an Fhíona) Burke, lord of Upper Connacht and of the Clanricard Burkes. The Clanricard Burkes are a classic example of the so-called ‘rebel’ English lineages in medieval Ireland who were partially gaelicised and essentially only acknowledged royal authority in Ireland when it suited them. Consequently, it is worthwhile then to dwell on the nature of this revolt. It may be briefly stated that the revolt appears to have been bloodless, or at least no reference to violence is made. Furthermore, there is no evidence of there being any dissension or class struggle to determine the internal power structure of Galway.

Of much greater interest is the description of the revolt’s participants and their course of action. The participants are described as the burgesses (burgens[ibus]) and the whole community (tota co[mmun]itate) of Galway. The distinction between the two was clearly meaningful to the clerk of the judicial session at Ballinrobe, and, therefore, it should matter to us. The town’s burgesses must simply refer to all inhabitants of the town who possessed property by burgage tenure and presumably includes the wealthier elites of the town. In terms of negative definition, the whole community of the town must include all those who inhabited Galway but did not possess burgess status. This is unfortunately vague, and it is to be regretted that this cannot be further analysed in terms of the social composition of the rebels. Nonetheless, it may be taken to imply the lower socio-economic proportion of the town’s population from minor craftsmen to urban labourers (and all other individuals who may have rented their homes rather than legally held them in their own right). If the court record is correct in its description of the revolt’s participants, it means that at least a majority of Galway’s population (however that was supposedly determined) backed the decision to swear fealty unto Burke. This was not necessarily a revolt by the town’s elites but perhaps a genuinely popular decision to enter rebellion and swear fealty unto Burke.

It is crucial that we understand the nature of the rebels’ actions. The decision to offer Burke the town’s ‘royal’ profits was not a case of Galway paying ‘black rent’ or tribute to Burke, but something more serious.Footnote ²² The emphasis on fealty within the court record implies that Galway had — rather dramatically — renounced its allegiance to the English crown when they swore fealty to Burke. Their decision to ring the town’s common bell is reminiscent of urban revolts elsewhere in Europe and underscores the symbolic importance of audio or sound in the psychology of rebellion.Footnote ²³ Additionally, a fact not stated by the record but which can be safely assumed, is that the revolt was also a rebellion against the feudal lord of Galway: the child earl of March and Ulster, Roger Mortimer. As Mortimer was 14 years old at the outbreak of the revolt, the town along with the rest of his far-flung inheritance was held in custody by the crown (which was meant to safeguard the interests of its wards).Footnote ²⁴ This means that the fealty stated as being owed to the crown was also owed to Mortimer. These fealties were not in contradiction with each other. Their complementary nature can be seen in a letter written during Richard II’s first expedition to Ireland, in which he commanded the Irish lords of Ulster to personally appear before him so that they could swear an ‘oath of supreme allegiance and fealty’ to himself and an ‘oath of fealty’ to the same Earl Roger Mortimer.Footnote ²⁵ In effect, Galway’s townspeople were renouncing the lordship of both Mortimer and the crown. That the townspeople anticipated potential resistance to this declaration can be seen in their later decision to give Burke the keys to all of the town’s gates, a powerful visual and material symbol of his new-found lordship over the town.

II

The extract from the plea roll records an extraordinary decision by the townspeople of Galway. It does not, however, offer any explanation for why the revolt occurred. This silence is compounded by the loss of the town’s municipal archives from this period alongside the disappearance of aristocratic documentation relating to the lordship of Connacht (of which Galway formed part).Footnote ²⁶ By chance, the personal archive of the Blake family of Galway survived into the early twentieth century, with a published two-volume calendar made of this collection by Martin Joseph Blake before its destruction in 1922.Footnote ²⁷ Yet, despite its provenance from the Blake family, this collection does not greatly add to our understanding of the causes of the Galway revolt. To this shortage of primary sources can be added a paucity of research on Connacht in the late fourteenth century — especially when compared to the other provinces.Footnote ²⁸ More research is needed on the emergence and consolidation of the Burke lordships in this region during this period and their Dublin and Westminster connections which Robin Frame has characterised as ‘closer … than standard accounts of them allow’.Footnote ²⁹ Despite these daunting difficulties, it is important for our understanding of urban dynamics in late medieval Ireland to attempt to explain why the revolt happened. To do so, we will contextualise the revolt against the course of political events in Connacht, as well as events elsewhere in the lordship of Ireland and the realm of England as a means of illuminating this problem.

Since the thirteenth century, Galway had been part of the lordship of the de Burgh earls of Ulster and lords of Connacht and during this time ‘was probably held on a fairly tight rein’.Footnote ³⁰ Following the assassination of the last de Burgh earl in 1333, the English lordship of Connacht disintegrated. With scant regard being paid to the late earl’s heir — his infant daughter, Elizabeth — the de Burgh or Burke kindreds in the province waged a civil war to secure local supremacy.Footnote ³¹ Eventually the Burke civil war settled into a long-lasting animosity between the Burkes of Lower (Northern) Connacht and the Burkes of Upper (Southern) Connacht. The weakening of the Burke supremacy in Connacht led to a revival of a strong native Irish kingship of Connacht for much of the later fourteenth century.Footnote ³² In these circumstances, the ability of the theoretical seigneurial lord of Connacht or of the English lordship’s administration to intervene west of the River Shannon was increasingly limited, with whatever influence exerted in the region ultimately at the behest and willingness of local English and Irish lords.Footnote ³³

Galway’s place in these shifting political sands, especially during the fourteenth century, is unclear, though it is commonly assumed to have come under the domination of the neighbouring Clanricard Burkes.Footnote ³⁴ However, it must be stressed that Galway’s internal history during the fourteenth century is essentially hidden. Certainly, in the fifteenth century, the town and its inhabitants had dealings with the rival Burke kindreds of Upper and Lower Connacht, and the town may well have lain on the border (or shifting border) between these two local supremacies.Footnote ³⁵ Despite the assumption of Clanricard dominance, it is evident that Galway persisted in its connections with both its feudal lord and with the rest of the English lordship of Ireland. It was at the request of their hereditary lady, Elizabeth de Burgh, that the town received a grant of murage in 1361.Footnote ³⁶ During 1375–7, it served in fact as one of Ireland’s staple ports, the designated entrepôts for the export of merchandise from the country.Footnote ³⁷ Though the broader lordship of Connacht may have essentially evaporated after the 1330s, Galway remained within the English orbit and presumably subject to the lordship of the eventual heirs of the de Burghs: the Mortimer earls of March and Ulster.

Nonetheless, the weakness of the English position west of the River Shannon left the town painfully exposed to the vicissitudes of regional politics. The death of Ruaidhrí Ó Conchobhair, king of Connacht, in 1384 ushered in a civil war to claim the vacant kingship by both Toirdhealbhach Óg Ó Conchobhair Donn and Toirdhealbhach Ó Conchobhair Ruadh.Footnote ³⁸ This division had fateful consequences, an annalist commenting that ‘general war sprang up throughout all Connacht’ as a result.Footnote ³⁹ The following year witnessed fighting rage across the province, and Galway was not immune from these events. Two writs issued by the Dublin chancery on 4 July 1385 indicate that violence had spread to the town. The first of these writs appointed a certain Thomas Ocasy to be the new seneschal and receiver of the town of Galway and the other royal lordships in Connacht. He was moreover to inquire into the deeds of Thomas Alwyne, the former receiver, and to return his findings to the chancery.Footnote ⁴⁰ The second writ ordered Ocasy to travel to Galway and Connacht ‘considering the damages and destructions that were perpetrated in the town of Galway and other parts of Connacht’ and supervise royal officials in the province.Footnote ⁴¹ An important dimension of the Uí Chonchobhair civil war was the rivalry between the Burkes of Upper and Lower Connacht who participated on opposing sides. In 1386, Thomas Burke, lord of Lower Connacht, accepted the overlordship of Richard Óg Burke, lord of Upper Connacht.Footnote ⁴² However, this political settlement was temporary since Richard Óg died the following year and was succeeded by his son William — the same William who took over the lordship of Galway during 1388–9.Footnote ⁴³ William was likely attempting to secure his position in the region, which may have been vulnerable following his accession. It is worth noting that the Connacht annalist under 1388 records Ó Conchobhair Ruadh making ‘great raids’ on William’s ally, Ó Conchobhair Donn, which again led to ‘a great general war in all Connacht.’Footnote ⁴⁴ The immediate catalyst of the Galway revolt must have been somehow linked with the ongoing Uí Chonchobhair civil war, though the exact order or precedence of events leading to it remains unclear.

Though Galway’s local context is paramount in our understanding of the circumstances in which the revolt erupted, it is important to further contextualise the revolt against wider developments. Galway was, after all, one of Ireland’s leading ports and the urban and mercantile elites of the town were likely aware of major events happening elsewhere, both in the lordship of Ireland and in the realm of England.Footnote ⁴⁵ It may be wondered if the townspeople drew any inspiration from the disturbances which beset the lordship during the troubled lieutenancy and later governorship of Sir William Windsor (1369–72, 1373–6). Windsor’s arbitrary rule, worsened by the failure of the English crown to pay him his promised wages, saw him ‘seeking subsidies from a reluctant Irish parliament and imposing new customs in Irish ports’, actions which ‘prompted outcry’ from the lordship’s inhabitants.Footnote ⁴⁶ Peter Crooks has expertly reconstructed how this ‘outcry’ affected Dublin, whose inhabitants sent an embassy to the royal council in England to denounce Windsor in 1371. Later in 1375 when Edward III summoned the commons of the Irish parliament to appear before him in Westminster, the communities of Ireland (including that of Dublin) refused to grant their representatives the right to grant any subsidy.Footnote ⁴⁷ However, the crises of Windsor’s rule, while no doubt significant and the opposition it engendered bitter, cannot be construed as a ‘rebellion’ against the English crown. There was little possibility of the city folk of Dublin swearing fealty to a new overlord. Rather, its inhabitants’ ‘fervent criticisms sprang from its equally fervent adherence to the crown and what it perceived as the cardinal virtues of English government’.Footnote ⁴⁸ The events of these years radically differed from what occurred in Galway during 1388–9. Moreover, the distance in time between both events would preclude any obvious direct link between them.

Consequently, it may be more valuable to situate the Galway revolt in the treacherous political currents sweeping England in the 1380s. During this decade, an increasingly bitter conflict developed between, on one hand, King Richard II and his favoured courtiers, and, on the other hand, a significant proportion of the greater magnates and wider English political community.Footnote ⁴⁹ These political manoeuvrings had significant implications for the English lordship of Ireland.Footnote ⁵⁰ One of the most radical moments in the constitutional history of the lordship occurred on 1 December 1385, when the royal favourite Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, was created marquess of Dublin by Richard II.Footnote ⁵¹ This grant came with significant powers, the lifetime lordship and dominion of Ireland itself. This remarkable boost to de Vere’s position was confirmed in October 1386, when Richard II elevated him to the higher title of duke of Ireland.Footnote ⁵² It was initially envisioned that de Vere would lead an expedition to Ireland, but this never materialised as political conditions in England worsened. De Vere was deeply resented by Richard II’s opponents, and when the crisis finally broke in 1387 with the rebellion of the Lords Appellant, de Vere raised a royal army which was subsequently scattered at Radcot Bridge in December. In the ensuing parliament held at Westminster — the so called ‘Merciless Parliament’ — de Vere, who had fled into exile, was sentenced to death and his lands forfeited.Footnote ⁵³ Ireland was henceforth resumed into royal possession, albeit at a time when the realm of England was dominated by a group of magnates hostile to the king. That the initial act of rebellion by the townspeople of Galway occurred only a few months after these events in England, at a time of severe royal weakness and when the governance of the English lordship of Ireland was in turmoil, is surely not without significance.Footnote ⁵⁴ These developments must have been welcomed by William Burke as he attempted to secure his position in Connacht. Indeed, the threat that he may have posed to Galway may have seemed even greater during 1388 with the clear realisation from every party that no assistance could be expected from Dublin, never mind from Westminster.

The Galway revolt thus occurred during the course of two independent political crises: the Uí Chonchobhair civil war in Connacht and the revolt of the Lords Appellant in the realm of England. In short, the townspeople were exposed to local and immediate danger at a time of chaos and weakness at the centre of the Plantagenet dominions. The timing of the revolt may indicate a possible intersection between these two crises, but this can only remain a suggestion, the evidence cannot be pushed further. The wider context may not necessarily explain why the Galway revolt happened, but it does illuminate the wider world and circumstances in which the townspeople of Galway gathered together and decided to embark on rebellion against their feudal lord and the English crown.

III

This article has so far accepted the intrinsic reliability of the source evidence, that the court record produced an accurate account of what happened at Galway on 5 November 1388 and 10 May 1389. Documentary material produced by administrative structures, such as the king’s bench, can possess a beguiling believability, namely that their matter-of-fact nature precludes the possibility of any real bias. This belief, though easy to settle into through prolonged immersion in record sources, can nonetheless mislead historians.Footnote ⁵⁵ Perhaps the most obvious issue with the evidence lies in the portrayal of the actions of the townspeople of Galway. It is reported that William Burke, as well as the fealty of the townspeople, received all the profits owed to the king from the town with the explicit exception of the coket, a customs duty due on merchandise which was payable to the Irish exchequer — meaning, of course, payable to the English crown.Footnote ⁵⁶ This is a rather curious exception, and if this was truly a rebellion against the crown, why make this exception? Why not indeed grant to Burke all the profits owed to the crown by the town including the coket? It is here important to remember that Galway was legally part of the inheritance of the Mortimer earl of March and Ulster. The profits listed in the judicial record as being owed to king were only owed to him during Mortimer’s minority. The only money the townspeople owed to the crown in normal circumstances was the coket itself. This suggests that the townspeople did not intend an outright royal rebellion but were rather renouncing the lordship of Mortimer in favour of Burke. That the coket was left for the king may have been a concession to persuade the crown into accepting this new political reality.

The narrative framing the account of the revolt may be partly explained by the venue where the report of the rebellion was first recorded: villam de roba or ‘the town of Roba’, which is Ballinrobe in modern County Mayo. Ballinrobe was part of the lordship of the previously mentioned Thomas Burke, lord of Lower Connacht and, crucially here, rival of William Burke.Footnote ⁵⁷ Thomas had previously submitted to William’s father, Richard Óg, in 1386 but following the latter’s death in 1387 must have striven to strengthen his political position. That the legal proceedings against Henry Blake began at Ballinrobe, by no means a neutral venue, must suggest a strategy to vilify William Burke before the colonial government. It should not necessarily be assumed the royal justices who heard the case were paragons of justice and immune to persuasion or corruption. One of them, the bishop of Clonmacnoise, later recounted how he had to live at his own personal expense in Connacht for over half a year without any financial support from the crown, except for certain ‘refreshment’ he had received from Thomas Burke. This reference to Thomas’ hospitality must mean that he provided accommodation and security for the judges while they were resident in his lands. Furthermore, the escort provided to the judges during their tour of duty was given by an unnamed son of Maolsheachlainn Ó Ceallaigh. Ó Ceallaigh was the lord of Uí Mhaine (in southern Connacht) and the brother-in-law of Thomas Burke.Footnote ⁵⁸ All this information must cast considerable doubt on the accuracy of the evidence provided in the court record. It is nearly certain that Thomas had personal reasons to ensure that William’s actions in Galway were known by the royal administration and to ensure that his own perspective informed (if not framed) the official narrative of events.

External evidence which further complicates the straightforward narrative of revolt can be found in a calendar of an Irish exchequer memoranda roll from 1399–1400 which was created by the Public Record Office of Ireland prior to the original’s destruction in 1922.Footnote ⁵⁹ According to this calendar, during Michaelmas term in 1399, the account was heard before the barons of the Irish exchequer of Geoffrey Blak[e], Stephen Dyvelyn and William Seman, ‘supervisors guardians and receivers of the new custom called le coket in the port of the town of Galway’ of money they had received from 25 October 1387 to 13 February 1393. On the same occasion, Blake and Dyvelyn presented the customs account for 13 February 1393 to 8 February 1395.Footnote ⁶⁰ At this hearing, the collectors, represented by their attorney John Blak[e], sought allowances for several sums owed to the exchequer from their period of office. The information found here has unappreciated importance for our understanding of the Galway revolt, revealing an ongoing relationship between Galway and the royal (and the de Vere) administration in Ireland during the 1380s and 1390s. As stated earlier, de Vere briefly held the lordship of Ireland, and during this dynamic period of the English lordship’s history, de Vere (described as ‘late Marquis of Dublin’) assigned Thomas Ocasy to receive the customs of Galway by a commission dated 4 December 1386 and by a writ dated 6 December. Ocasy received payment from the customs on two different occasions: £56 which was witnessed by an indenture on 17 December 1386 and later 11 marks 6s. 8d. which was witnessed by letters of acquittance dated 21 May 1387. These payments were made before the revolt of 5 November 1388 and merely indicate that Galway was nominally loyal in the preceding years. However, the same hearing reveals that the custom collectors also sought an allowance for £50 which they had paid to William Athy, the king’s treasurer in the parts of Connacht. They exhibited before the barons of the exchequer a ‘certain letter of acquittance’ from Athy dated 21 December 1388, a month and a half after the revolt (and not long after Athy’s appointment as treasurer of Connacht on 8 December), which recorded that £40 ‘thereof’ was delivered to Thomas Burke. In 1390, after William Burke received the keys of the town’s gates, the collectors paid 40 marks to Gerald Caunton, an Augustinian vicar, who had been assigned to raise money from the town’s customs. Indeed, William only appears to have received money from the coket in 1394, when he was given 10 marks by a royal writ dated 7 April 1394.

Finally, it is worth noting an additional piece of tantalising information that is also no longer extant. Martin Joseph Blake in the first calendar of his family’s private muniments draws attention to an enrolment in the (now destroyed) memoranda rolls of the Irish exchequer made on 16 June 1545 of a decree previously made by Sir Anthony St Leger, lord deputy of Ireland, in favour of a merchant named Richard Blake from Galway relating to fishing rights on the local river. In support of his claims, Richard Blake supposedly displayed a number of documents including a transcription ‘of an old rental of the yearly revenues of the Lord of Connaught within the town of Galway made in the 17^th year of King Richard II’ — that is, during 1393–4.Footnote ⁶¹ The lord of Connacht — at least nominally — was, of course, Mortimer who had received seisin of his Irish inheritance on 18 June 1393.Footnote ⁶² That same summer the earl’s uncle, Sir Thomas Mortimer, arrived in Ireland as his deputy.Footnote ⁶³ And it was in the ensuing financial year that the rental would have been made based on the regnal year provided. This indicates that prior to Roger’s own arrival in Ireland in the autumn of 1394, Galway had acknowledged the lordship of the Mortimer earl. Certainly, the production of a rental suggests that Mortimer could command officials within the town and, perhaps more importantly, collect revenue from the town. The same rental also supposedly showed that Henry Blake, the rebel of 1388–9, owed to the earl 6s. 8d. rent from the fee of the fishing of Fourthe-de-Hayle which Blake had acquired from Adam McScyan during 1373–4, according to another deed exhibited by Richard Blake before Anthony St Leger.Footnote ⁶⁴

As this information demonstrates, the record of the revolt recorded by the royal justices in Connacht was clearly influenced by obscure contemporary political manoeuvring in the province. Despite this, even if the record is perhaps not completely reliable from a historical perspective, it must have set the official tone for future relations between Galway, Mortimer and the crown. That something happened — or was believed to have happened — on 5 November 1388 and later on 10 May 1389 must have been in the minds of all the participants involved. How else can it be explained that Henry Blake decided it was worthwhile to seek a royal pardon during Richard II’s expedition to Ireland in 1394–95? Moreover, as we will shortly see, Mortimer made real attempts to solidify (if not reforge) his lordship of the town during the 1390s.

IV

The Galway Revolt of 1388–9 formed part of a broader picture of political decline felt both among the English community of Ireland and by the royal court at Westminster to characterise the state of the Irish colony in the fourteenth century (an opinion shared by most modern historians). Within this wider current of gloom, it must be remembered that Galway’s decision to revolt was rooted in immediate political events and, therefore, its new-found allegiance to Burke was subject to future changes based on new political conditions. Burke’s usurpation of comital (and perhaps royal) authority in Galway did not remain unchallenged by the lordship’s government. As already noted, the opening act of the Galway revolt occurred on 5 November 1388. A month later, on 8 December, three men were appointed to official positions within the lordship of Connacht (which theoretically included Galway). First, Thomas Burke — the rival of William Burke — was appointed keeper of Connacht and deputy of the justiciar.Footnote ⁶⁵ Secondly, William Athy, one of Thomas’s associates, was appointed treasurer of the lordship.Footnote ⁶⁶ Thirdly, Walter Bermingham, lord of Athenry, and probably at this time an ally of Thomas Burke, was appointed sheriff of the lordship.Footnote ⁶⁷ Finally, both Thomas and Bermingham were appointed as justices in Connacht.Footnote ⁶⁸ In other words, the royal administration in Ireland in late 1388 (which represented the interests of the dominant Lords Appellant in England) responded by assigning positions of at least nominal authority to William Burke’s enemies in Connacht. It is perhaps significant that in December 1388 there is a reference to Sir Thomas Mortimer, the uncle of the Mortimer earl, alongside the duke of Gloucester, having being appointed as the governors of Ireland.Footnote ⁶⁹ Though this came to nothing and Mortimer’s enrolled appointment as (sole) justiciar of Ireland on 5 March 1389 was made irrelevant by the king’s reassumption of personal power on 3 May, these developments may have alarmed William Burke.Footnote ⁷⁰ Indeed, the prospective arrival of Thomas Mortimer may well have prompted the second phase of the Galway revolt on 10 May when the townspeople presented William with the keys of the town’s gates in order to resist the entry of royal officials.

Despite Galway’s rebellion, the lordship’s government continued to interact with individuals from the town. Two months later, on 15 July 1389, Henry Blake ‘burgess of Galway’ was appointed with the clerk John Ograde, rector of the church of Loughrea to inquire into the alleged wrongs committed by Muircheartach Ó Ceallaigh, bishop of Clonfert and adherent of the Avignon papacy, against William Ó Cormacáin, the new archbishop of Tuam.Footnote ⁷¹ Remarkably, on 11 February 1390, Henry Blake in fact received a pardon of outlawry in a plea of trespass at the suit of the clerk William Karlell.Footnote ⁷² A royal writ dated 20 April 1390 to the sheriff of Connacht and to the ‘bailiffs, provost and commonalty’ of Galway recorded a complaint of William Bermingham, lord of Athenry (who was in fact the sheriff of Connacht), ‘that certain Irishmen from the lower parts of Connacht are fishing in his water in the said parts’ and that the officials were not to buy any salmon taken in those waters.Footnote ⁷³ While these instructions are not evidence of them being carried out by the individuals involved, they at least indicate a mindset in the lordship’s administration that they could interact with figures in Connacht. Nor was William Burke completely isolated from the colonial administration as in 1393 it is revealed that he had been formally retained by the crown for the ‘wars in Ireland’ with a fee of 40 marks per annum.Footnote ⁷⁴ These incidents are further hints that William Burke was not intending to completely withdraw from royal allegiance but rather simply to usurp the place of the Mortimer earl in Galway.

Though the details are obscure, the townspeople of Galway subsequently parted ways with Burke after the events of 1388–9. The previously mentioned rental for the town for 1393–4, made for the financial year immediately following Mortimer’s seisin of his Irish inheritance and the arrival of his uncle into Ireland, suggest that Galway had withdrawn their fealty from Burke and had returned to Mortimer’s lordship by this date at the latest. No doubt, the greatest catalyst for this change was the expedition of Richard II — and the arrival of the young Mortimer — to Ireland during 1394–5 (and the expectation of their arrival). Mortimer’s ambitions are directly addressed in two distinct sources: the Annals of Clonmacnoise and a praise poem dedicated to the earl which was composed by the Welsh poet Iolo Goch. The former does not even record the arrival of the first English king to visit Ireland since King John, focusing instead on Mortimer: ‘The earle of March ariued in Ireland of a purpose to get his rents of the Inhabitants of the Kingdome.’Footnote ⁷⁵ Meanwhile, the praise poem, though not directly mentioning Galway, calls upon Mortimer to ‘boldly conquer Connacht’.Footnote ⁷⁶ The earl’s arrival must have been a subject of great interest to the inhabitants of Galway, and so too must have been the king’s presence in Ireland which presented an opportunity for the town’s erstwhile rebels. Richard came to do ‘justice to every man’ and pursued a policy of granting general pardons in order to bring his theoretical subjects in Ireland back into the royal fold.Footnote ⁷⁷ Among the recipients was Henry Blake of Galway who received a royal pardon on 20 February 1395 at Dublin. Blake shortly afterwards appeared before the king’s bench in Dublin on 4 March, which led to our evidence for this revolt being recorded. On being asked how he responded for his actions during 1388–9, he produced for the court his royal letters of pardon and was consequently released.Footnote ⁷⁸

Galway’s continued reintegration within the English political orbit can be traced in the following months. Mortimer was appointed lieutenant of Ireland with specific responsibility for Ulster, Meath and Connacht on 20 April 1395 (which took effect from 25 April).Footnote ⁷⁹ As lieutenant, Mortimer witnessed a grant of murage to Galway on 8 November 1395, to which the town attached great importance.Footnote ⁸⁰ A later petition sent to Henry IV from his ‘English lieges’ — namely, the portreeve, bailiffs and the commonalty of the town of Galway — asked the king to confirm the grant of murage, which he duly did on 3 March 1402.Footnote ⁸¹ The grant of murage was followed by the more significant royal charter to Galway on 26 January 1396. The charter describes Galway as the key of Connacht, surrounded by the king’s ‘Irish enemies and English rebels, so that the burgesses of that town and others dwelling there dare not come to that town or leave it for the purpose of trade or transacting other business, either by land or water, without a great guard’. The charter contains three principal grants to the town. First, in support of the local merchants and to encourage others to live in Galway, the provost and burgesses were granted the right to annually elect a sovereign to govern the town. Secondly, ‘that no merchant or other person residing in the town’ who was not a burgess of Galway could ‘buy or sell merchandise or victuals at retail within the liberty of the town’. And thirdly, they were granted all the liberties that the ‘burgesses of Drogheda on both sides of the water’ possessed.Footnote ⁸² Edmund Curtis incorrectly believed that this charter established Galway as a royal town.Footnote ⁸³ It was indeed a royal charter which conveyed these rights to the townspeople, but two features of the charter negate this interpretation. The grant of the liberties of Drogheda to the townspeople contained the clause ‘saving to the lord of the town and his heirs, the rents, services, fines, amercements, issues and profits belonging to him and them from that town and its courts, just as they and their ancestors were accustomed to receive.’ In other words, Mortimer retained his lordship over the town. This is confirmed by the witnesses of the charter, for the very first is none other than Galway’s feudal lord, Earl Roger Mortimer. Mortimer was not ceding his rights over the town but rather was using the instruments of royal authority in Ireland to strengthen his lordship over Galway.Footnote ⁸⁴

This interpretation can be supported by more now-lost evidence (as is the nature of things). As noted earlier in this article, a collection of deeds belonging to the Blake family of Galway was destroyed in 1922 but had been calendared and published between 1902 and 1905. Among the calendared items was an indenture made by certain townspeople of Galway on 10 November 1445 which recorded an agreed division of properties inside and outside of the town. According to the transcription made of this indenture in 1899 (which was later published as an edition in 1905), the original manuscript stated that for ‘mor credens ye comyn selis ys yput hirto of Galvy’, that is, for ‘more credence, the common seal of Galway is put hereto’.Footnote ⁸⁵ Photographs of this common seal where included both in the 1905 edition as well as in the second volume of the Blake deeds [see Figure 1]

Figure 1 The common seal of Galway.Footnote ⁸⁸

It is here essential to compare this with the seal of Earl Roger [See Figure 2.] The traditional Mortimer coat of arms displayed ‘barry or and azure, on a chief of the first two pallets of the second, the corners gyronny, overall an escutcheon argent’.Footnote ⁸⁶ However, this changed with Earl Roger who sometime during his youth quartered his paternal arms with those of his maternal grandmother, Elizabeth de Burgh, hereditary countess of Ulster, which displayed ‘or, a cross gules.’Footnote ⁸⁷ This means that Earl Roger’s coat of arms showed both the Mortimer and de Burgh arms or alternatively the March and Ulster arms. This specific coat of arms was utilised first by Roger and latterly by his son Edmund, fifth and last Mortimer earl of March (d. 1425). If Roger’s seal is compared with the common seal of Galway, it is evident that the latter device was modelled on the earl’s coat of arms, being in effect a reverse version. Pertinent to this observation is the matter of timing: namely, when did Galway adopt this heraldic device for the town’s common seal? From the outset, it must have occurred during the collective ‘reigns’ of both Roger and Edmund Mortimer: 1381–1425. This is, it must be stressed, the maximum time range. The last Mortimer earl is not known to have made any charter to the town of Galway, unlike his father who as royal lieutenant of Ireland witnessed (and was the driving force behind) two royal charters to the town in 1395 and 1396.Footnote ⁹⁰ That Roger was the likely initiator of this seal is suggested by his behaviour elsewhere. On 17 June 1397 while at his castle of Clare in county Suffolk in England, Roger granted the mayor and bailiffs of his town of Sudbury (in the same county) the right to annually elect two serjeants to carry before them maces bearing Roger’s coat of arms.Footnote ⁹¹ Sudbury, like Galway, formed part of Roger’s maternal inheritance and these grants suggest a strong awareness on his part to visually demonstrate his ancestral right to the lordship of both towns, while also advertising the arrival of his paternal dynasty to the scene.Footnote ⁹² That his coat of arms was modified for Galway to emphasise his maternal de Burgh ancestry was a strong indicator of Roger’s ambitions in the west of Ireland in the face of local Burke dynasties. As for the townspeople of Galway, the adoption of this new common seal publicly reaffirmed their fealty to the Mortimer earl of March and Ulster, and lord of Connacht, and marked clearly their return from the revolt of 1388–89.

Figure 2 The seal of Roger Mortimer, Earl of March and Ulster.Footnote ⁸⁹

However, Galway’s renewed ties with their feudal lord — and the English crown — had violent consequences for the town. Mortimer’s death in battle in 1398 removed whatever protection he offered the town and provided an opportunity for William Burke to regain his local influence. In 1399, Burke attacked and sacked Galway ‘and innumerable were the spoils taken from it, both gold and silver, and all kinds of goods’.Footnote ⁹³ More evidence is provided in a royal licence granted on 21 March 1400 for an ultimately abortive expedition to retake Galway. According to this licence, Galway ‘which in times past was of the king’s allegiance until lately it was taken in war’ by Burke, which he was able to do ‘by the assent of certain traitors in it’.Footnote ⁹⁴ The direct mention of traitors betraying the town is fascinating in light of the revolt of 1388–9, and it is not impossible that Henry Blake was one of the conspirators, for on 29 August 1402 (along with a John Blake), he received new letters of pardon for all treasons.Footnote ⁹⁵ Whatever the hopes of this proposed expedition to recapture Galway, nothing appears to have materialised from it, and in the early years of the fifteenth century Galway likely remained under the influence of Burke of Upper Connacht, who re-emerges at this time as the nominal agent of the English lordship’s government in Connacht.Footnote ⁹⁶ However, it would be unwise to assume that the town remained in the control of the Burkes throughout this century.Footnote ⁹⁷ A petition to the English royal council from c.1435–6 reveals that only ‘the walled townes of Galvy [Galway] and Athenry’ were free from subjugation by the king’s enemies in Connacht.Footnote ⁹⁸ The emphasis on the town’s walls indicates why it was able to retain this relative local independence and underscores the importance of those earlier grants of murage the townspeople had sought and received.

V

Robin Frame, speaking of the wider echoes of the English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, has commented ‘in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland the silence of the popular voice is deafening’.Footnote ⁹⁹ The same silence is pervasive throughout much of the course of medieval Irish history and the history of the English lordship more specifically. Yet, it is hoped that this article has done something to alleviate that silence. Regardless of the interests that shaped the narrative of the Galway revolt as found in the plea roll, it is clear that some kind of rebellion occurred in the town during 1388–9. That it found its likely inspiration in the competitive political world of late-fourteenth-century Connacht, and perhaps was buoyed by the weakness of English royal authority across Britain and Ireland, in no way undermines the designation of the revolt as a popular revolt. As the record indicates, it was by the ‘common assent and grant’ of the burgesses ‘and indeed the whole community’ of Galway that the decision was made to first swear fealty to William Burke, and later to deliver to him the keys of all of the town’s gates. This was done in direct opposition to royal authority and, as we have established, in opposition to the town’s feudal lord. The court record’s language is doubtless formulaic, yet in the absence of any other source, we must depend on it for all its vagaries and ambiguities. Its language implies that the decision to revolt was not made by an elite cabal within the town, but was assented to by all the townspeople, or at least the greater part of them. It is here at last that we catch a whisper of that otherwise elusive popular voice in the history of the English lordship of Ireland.

Some sixty years ago, H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles remarked ‘that the history of mediaeval Ireland is imperfectly known arises not so much from lack of material as from imperfect exploitation of what is available’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Galway’s example underscores the necessity for further research into medieval Ireland’s urban history and locating that history (and the history of the English lordship) within broader European trends and crises, especially with the phenomenon of popular revolt which impacted the continent in the fourteenth century. This article suggests that the ‘contagion of revolts’ which occurred in Europe in the decades following the onset of the Black Death had an Irish manifestation. It is not necessary to prove a direct link between the events in Galway and revolts elsewhere in Europe to interpret the revolt of Galway’s townspeople as part of a larger European pattern of protest and rebellion. It may be objected that Galway was by no means a typical late-medieval English town in Ireland or indeed elsewhere, being in a region where English lordship was weak and the power of Irish and ‘rebel’ English lords was strong. However, that would be to miss the point. The gradual weakening of the English lordship during the fourteenth century placed urban settlements across Ireland in increasingly precarious positions. When their traditional feudal or royal overlords were unable to effectively guarantee their protection, urban communities could only respond as they thought best to survive difficult times. In the case of Galway during 1388–9, such calculations brought the townspeople into open rebellion against their feudal lord — and the English crown itself.