SOCIETY, GRADES OF ANGLO-NORMANTheir endurance was guaranteed because the grants
were made in “tail male,” meaning that should the
male line fail, the earldom could not suffer partition
between heiresses but would descend intact to the
nearest male relative.
On only one occasion was a dignity higher than earl
introduced to Ireland. In 1383, Robert de Vere, earl of
Oxford and an intimate of King Richard II (1377–99),
was created marquis of Dublin. A “marquis” was
intended to be superior to an earl but inferior to the
dignity of “duke.” The latter title had not existed in
England until 1337 and thereafter was usually reserved
for members of the royal family. Yet, in 1386, de Vere
was further promoted to be duke of Ireland. The exper-
iment proved ephemeral and personally disastrous for
de Vere. He never came to Ireland, and resentment
against him in England, culminating in the Appellant
crisis of 1385–86, forced him to flee the kingdom,
never to return.
The Parliamentary Peerage
and the Lesser Nobility
Below the earls were all the other nobles of Ireland.
This non-comital class was extremely fluid. The for-
tunes of each family depended just as much on luck
and biological accident as on landed wealth and mili-
tary ability. Status could not be guaranteed to survive
into the next generation. This truism also held for the
English nobility, but it was particularly obvious in
Ireland. The families that were granted earldoms in the
fourteenth century descended from the mere adventur-
ers who had arrived at the earliest stages of the con-
quest. Their elevation allowed new families to
occupy the second rank of the nobility, for instance
the le Poers, Roches, and Cauntetons. The heads of
these families usually held in capite (i.e., “in chief,”
or directly) of the crown, but they were also leaders
of great lineages. By the fourteenth century, due to the
frontier conditions in which they had survived, these
lineages had often departed from English norms (see
Gaelicization). Problems arose if the supply of avail-
able land began to dry up. Landless “idlemen” (Latin:
ociosi; French: gentz udyves) from the junior branches
of these families were a persistent source of disorder,
and legislation was enacted to make the heads of lin-
eages responsible for disciplining the men who bore
their family names.
Just as the development of parliament in England
was instrumental in defining the nobility more rigor-
ously, so a similar development can be discerned in
Ireland where, from the late thirteenth century, parlia-
ment became increasingly important. The lists of those
who were summoned to parliament became customary
over time. A son was summoned because his father
had been, and in this manner a parliamentary peerage
crystallized by the late fourteenth century. In particu-
lar, the title “baron” began to be used with some con-
sistency. This vague term had been used loosely during
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to denote a
major landholder, for instance the FitzGerald barons
of Offaly, who became earls of Kildare in 1316. It was
a means of identification rather than a hereditary hon-
orific. But families such as the Flemings of Slane, the
Prestons of Gormanstown, and others who received
regular summonses to parliament, now began to refer
to themselves as barons. In fact, the first formally
created baronies date from the fifteenth century. In
1462, the baronies of Portlester and Trimlestown were
created by writ for the FitzEustace and Barnewall fam-
ilies respectively, and were followed in 1468 by the
short-lived barony of Ratoath created for Robert Bold
(d. 1479). Because the fourteenth-century baronies were
not created formally, but rather emerged over time, the
incumbents frequently disputed their antiquity, which
dictated seniority and precedence in parliament. The
prolonged competition for precedence between the
barons of Slane and Gormanstown was finally won
when the Prestons of Gormanstown were made the
first viscounts in Ireland in 1478. A viscountcy should
have conveyed a rank between baron and earl. In
practice, however, the struggle had not ended; in the
summons to parliament of 1489, the new viscount
Gormanstown was not accorded his proper title and
was ranked below the baron of Slane.
Beneath the emerging parliamentary peerage was
the lesser nobility or gentry. This grade of society
played an important part in filling the retinues of the
greater nobles and acted in various administrative
capacities, for instance as seneschals, or stewards, in
the great liberties of Ireland or sheriffs in the royal shires.
Among these men were found the knights who came
to make up the commons in parliament. Knighthood
was a personal, not a hereditary, honor. The mounted
knight had once been the elite of the Anglo-Norman
military machine. In England, where by the later Middle
Ages knightly families had gained land and ceased to
exercise a purely military function, the expense and
responsibilities of knighthood came to be seen as
something to avoid. In Ireland it is not hard to imagine
that the Anglo-Irish—isolated in other respects from
the English court—were pleased to enjoy the honor.
There are only fleeting glimpses of its ceremonial
aspect. One such occasion is the report of the Dublin
annalist which states that when Lionel of Clarence
first arrived in Ireland in 1361, he knighted many
residents of the colony. Among them was one Robert
Preston, who had acted for some time as chief justice
of the Dublin bench. The Preston family had begun in