COURTSthat Patrick de Courcy, later lord of Kinsale, was his
(illegitimate) son.
Though archaeological evidence such as mottes
and stone castles is considerable, documentary
records of John’s rule are meager. He quickly won
the support of Irish clerics and some Irish rulers.
Howden says Irishmen aided his invasion, and “Mac
Carthaigh’s Book” has Irishmen wasting Ulaid with
him in 1179. Niall Mac Mathgamna of Airgialla plun-
dered Louth with him in 1196. When, in 1197, his
brother Jordan was killed by an Irish adherent, he
ravaged the northwest with support of Irishmen, and
of Gallowaymen under Duncan of Carrick (then
rewarded with Ulster lands).
After the failed 1185 expedition of John, lord of
Ireland, de Courcy became chief governor and restored
order to the lordship. When Lord John rebelled against
King Richard in 1193 to 1194, de Courcy remained
loyal, joined Walter de Lacy of Mide (Meath) against
John’s allies, and aided Cathal Crobderg Ua Con-
chobair against William de Burgh. In 1200, Cathal fled
to Ulster, but when de Courcy and Hugh II de Lacy
invaded Connacht in 1201, de Courcy was captured
and brought to Dublin to swear allegiance to John, now
king. He and the de Lacys later became enemies, and
Hugh de Lacy’s Meath tenants defeated de Courcy in
battles at Down in 1203 and 1204. He gave hostages
to King John, went to England in 1205, and had his
English lands restored, but Ulster was awarded to
Hugh de Lacy, along with the title “earl” that was
never held by de Courcy. He rebelled, went to the
Isle of Man, and was given a fleet to invade Ulster
by his wife’s brother, King Rögnvaldr, but he failed
to capture Dundrum Castle and took refuge in Tír
nEógain with Áed Ua Néill. In November of 1207 he
returned to England, only reappearing in 1210 to help
King John overthrow the now disgraced de Lacy.
However, de Courcy never regained Ulster and pos-
sibly survived as a royal pensioner. The justiciar
was ordered in 1213 to provide land for his wife
Affreca, and was ordered to secure her dower lands
on September 22, 1219, suggesting that John had
recently died. He possibly was buried, as he wished,
at Canons Ashby, Northamptonshire (although
Affreca was buried in Grey Abbey, County Down).
No legitimate children are known.
SEÁN DUFFY
References and Further Reading
Duffy, Seán. “The First Ulster Plantation: John de Courcy and
the Men of Cumbria.” In Colony and Frontier in Medieval
Ireland:Eessays Presented to J. F. Lydon, edited by Terry
Barry, Robin Frame, and Katharine Simms, 1–27. London:
The Hambledon Press, 1995.
MacNeill, T. E. Anglo-Norman Ulster: The History and Archae-
ology of a Medieval Barony. Edinburgh, John Donald Ltd., 1980.
Orpen, Goddard Henry. “The Earldom of Ulster.” Journal of the
Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 43 (1913): 30–46,
133–143; 44 (1914): 51–66; 45 (1915): 123–142; 50 (1920):
166–177; 51 (1921): 68–76.
See alsoAirgialla; John; Ulaid; Ulster, Earldom ofCOURTS
Within the later medieval lordship of Ireland there
existed five different types of court: royal courts, com-
munal courts, town courts, private courts, and ecclesi-
astical courts. Royal courts functioned in much the same
general way as their counterparts in England, in accor-
dance with a model established in the last quarter of the
twelfth century. They were run by small groups of full-
time justices appointed by or in the name of the king.
They required specific written royal authorization for
most of the business they heard, and they kept a full
written record of that business. Although there are ref-
erences from the early thirteenth century onward to a
king’s court in Ireland, it does not seem to have been
constituted on the classic English royal court model. It
is only in 1221 that we first find a royal court run by a
group of justices and holding sessions (assise), both in
Dublin and elsewhere in individual counties in the lord-
ship. By the middle of the thirteenth century its sessions
in Dublin were coming to be described as sessions of
the Dublin Bench, and those sessions had a distinctive
countrywide civil jurisdiction of their own. The Dublin
Bench only, however, became a fully independent court
with its own separate group of justices and meeting on
a regular daily basis during four terms each year (on the
model of its Westminster namesake) in the 1270s. The
irregular sessions held by the same group of royal jus-
tices (and from the 1270s onward a separate group of
royal justices) outside Dublin (and from time to time in
Dublin itself for County Dublin) resembled sessions of
the General Eyre in England, with the same mixture of
civil and criminal jurisdiction and responsibility for con-
ducting local inquiries. These general county visitations,
however, ceased at around the same time as their English
counterparts, after the first quarter of the fourteenth cen-
tury. By then the most urgent civil business was being
heard (as in England) on a much more frequent basis
by assize justices, and the more urgent criminal business
by justices of jail delivery: from 1310 onward the same
justices seem to have been commissioned for both kinds
of business. The earliest evidence of a separate justi-
ciar’s court comes only from the second half of the
thirteenth century, and the first evidence of that court
meeting on a regular basis only from 1282. Prior to the
fifteenth century it seems to have traveled around the