LIMERICKwhich they had” (AFM). Like his great-grandfather,
Muirchertach had a Shannon fleet, probably based in
Limerick, and used it to maintain suzerainty over the
rival ports of Dublin and Waterford.
Under Tairdelbach and Muirchertach, Limerick
emerged as a major center of the church reform move-
ment. In 1111, its first properly consecrated bishop,
Gille (Gilbert), presided as papal legate over the Synod
of Ráith Bressail, which drew up a fixed territorial
diocesan scheme. Gille tells us that he spent some time,
and perhaps studied, in Rouen, where he met the future
St. Anselm of Canterbury. When he wrote from Limerick
to Anselm about 1107, he sent him twenty-five pearls,
presumably obtained from local oyster harvesters.
Trade and fisheries were Limerick’s staples, and the
wealth its masters could obtain from these is suggested
by the goods which Tairdelbach Ua Briain (d. 1167),
nephew of Muirchertach, escaped with from the town
in 1151: besides the drinking-horn of Brian Boru, he
made off with “ten score ounces of gold and sixty
beautiful jewels” (AFM).
At the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion, Domnall
Mór Ua Briain, son of Tairdelbach (d. 1167) was
king of Thomond and ruler of Limerick. He rebuilt
St.Mary’s cathedral in the 1170s and may have intro-
duced Continental religious orders to Limerick, being
credited by Sir James Ware as founder of St. Peter’s
priory for Augustinian nuns just outside the city walls.
Domnall Mór defeated the Anglo-Normans at Thurles
in 1174, but they advanced on Limerick in 1175 in
alliance with the high king, Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair.
Giraldus Cambrensis describes how the attackers
“found that the river was swift flowing and deep, and
formed an intervening obstacle which they could not
cross.” The “Song of Dermot” also records that the
city “was surrounded by a river, a wall, and a dyke
(fosse), so that no man could pass over without a ship
or a bridge, neither in winter nor in summer, except
by a difficult ford.”
Nevertheless, the Anglo-Normans took the town,
but within two years were forced to abandon it again
to Domnall Mór Ua Briain. Although nominally
granted by Henry II to Philip de Briouze in 1177, the
Anglo-Normans did not regain Limerick until after
Domnall’s death in 1194, infighting among the Uí Briain
facilitating their return. William de Burgh held Limerick
prior to 1203, briefly detaining Domnall’s son as pris-
oner there, but King John revived the de Briouze inter-
est, granting the lordship of Limerick to William de
Briouze (though it was subsequently withdrawn). John
may have ordered the construction of the castle that
still bears his name, although no evidence to that effect
exists (and he never stayed there), and, in order to
penetrate west of the Shannon, the castle was followed
by construction of Thomond Bridge.
There was no bridge where the later Baal’s (or
Ball’s) Bridge stood at the time of the Anglo-Norman
arrival, but it was built soon afterward, and became a
prominent landmark. A grant of King John to Thomas
fitz Maurice mentions “a burgage near the bridge on
the left, at the entrance of the vill towards the north,
within the walls of Limerick.” In 1340, Edward III
ordered funding for a bridge, possibly that which sur-
vived until its replacement in 1830. The origin of the
name is unknown; one theory is that baalcomes from
the Irish maol(bald), and applied to bridges lacking
parapets. Speed’s map of 1610 calls it “The thye
bridge,” presumably because it linked the “English”
and “Irish” towns on either side of the Abbey River.
The King’s Island site comprised “King John’s
Castle” and a walled enclave surrounding it, which
in the later Middle Ages became known as Englishtown,
the rest of the island being less settled, the castle
constable having grazing rights while the citizens
also used it for recreation. The adjacent fisheries were
highly prized and consequently controversial, espe-
cially the competing claims to a share in their profits.
TheBlack Book of Limerickrecords an inquisition
(1200–1201) by a jury of 36 inhabitants (12 Irishmen,
12 members of Limerick’s old Norse community,
and 12 new English residents) that found that the
archbishop was entitled to “half of the fishery of
Curragour, and the land of the mill on the water near
the walls of the city, and altogether a tenth of all the
fish which are caught by the fishermen of that city.”
Upriver from Curragour was the salmon fishery of
Laxweir, which, as its Norse name indicates, existed
since Viking times.
The mill recorded in 1200–1201 is probably that
marked on the map of Limerick drawn circa 1590
(TCD MS 1209/58), named Thomas Arthur’s Mill
from one of the city’s leading merchant families. The
map has another mill called Queen’s Mill, which may
also date from King John’s reign, when the bishop was
compensated “for the damage done to him by the con-
struction of the King’s mills and fisheries at Limerick.”
The priory of SS Mary and Edward, for Augustinian
“Crutched Friars,” apparently existed by 1216, and the
Knights Templars and Hospitallers both had houses
there, while the Franciscans were introduced by the
de Burgh family circa 1267. There was a hospital of
St. Mary, a poor-hospital of St. Laurence, and also a leper
hospital in the city. Donnchad Cairbreach Ua Briain
(d. 1242), a younger son of Domnall Mór, although
not ruling Limerick, is said by Ware to have founded
St. Saviour’s Dominican priory, where he was buried
in 1242.
One of his successors, Brian Ruad (d. 1277), appar-
ently reasserted lordship, and the English hosted “to
Limerick against Ua Briain” in 1271 (AI). His grandson