LÓEGAIRE MAC NÉILLHe was responsible for ensuring that defendants were
summoned to court, the execution of court process
against them and the enforcement of judgments within
his county, and reporting back on what he had done.
The sheriff was also the presiding officer of the county
court held in the county he served and was responsible
for executing its process and judgments as well. Sheriffs
were assisted in the execution of their duties by a staff
of under-sheriffs and clerks appointed by and answer-
able to them, and also by a chief sergeant and his
subordinates, who were generally responsible for the
local execution of royal mandates. There were also at
least two coroners in each county, whose primary
responsibility was to make enquiries into all suspicious
deaths, but who might be required to act in place of
the sheriff if he failed to execute any of his functions.
For the counties within the liberties, however, commu-
nication from the central authorities was through the
stewards, who were the main administrative officials
of the liberties concerned and who then transmitted
any necessary orders to the sheriffs.
Each county also possessed a county court. Like its
English counterpart, this had a significant civil juris-
diction and sole power to proclaim the outlawry of a
fugitive from justice. It was also a place for the choice
of representatives for the county at the Irish parliament
and also for the choice of sheriffs and coroners. The
primary location for the proclamation of newly enacted
legislation, and other matters the Dublin administra-
tion wished to draw to wider attention, was also the
county court. In addition, the county court was a locus
for wider decision-making on such matters as the
imposition of local taxation to help pay the costs of
local military activity.
The main administrative unit below the level of the
county was the cantred. The term is related to one used
in Wales and is etymologically equivalent to the
English term “hundred,” the term used for a similar
sub-county administrative unit. They were also often
based on preexisting areas, and generally coincided
with the basic area of ecclesiastical administration
above the parish and below the archdeaconry, the rural
deanery. They were significant units for the purposes
of taxation, law enforcement (the sheriff held a sheriff’s
tourn in each cantred twice a year), and general admin-
istration. But already before the end of the Middle
Ages the term “barony” was coming to be used in place
ofcantredfor these units.
The larger cities and towns of the later medieval
lordship generally enjoyed a substantial degree of
autonomy and were governed and administered by
their own elected officials (mayors or bailiffs) and their
councils. This autonomy was generally granted them
by royal charter, and the charter also generally con-
firmed some of the distinctive customs that were
observed in the town. Regular reissuing of these charters
allowed regular updating of their powers and of the city’s
custom. However autonomous, they remained ultimately
under the control of the Dublin administration.
How effective this structure of local government
was at any stage in the later Middle Ages is more
problematic. The late thirteenth century was probably
the period when the control of the Dublin administra-
tion reached its maximum extent, but even then there
were areas of Gaelic lordship within the existing coun-
ties in which the Dublin administration and its local
agents were relatively ineffective. Thereafter there was
a steady decline in its control and also therefore in the
effective reach of the colony’s local government struc-
tures. By the late fifteenth century, the area most firmly
under its control was the area of the Pale, but some
local government structures also survived outside that
area, not just in major towns but also in some rural
areas, often in discontinuous islands of settled govern-
mental structure that had managed to survive the wider
decline in the lordship’s fortunes.
PAUL BRANDReferences and Further Reading
Ellis, Steven. Reform and revival: English government in
Ireland, 1470-1536. Woodbridge; Boydell Press.1986.
McGrath, Gerard. ‘The Shiring of Ireland and the 1297 Parlia-
ment’ in Law and Disorder in Thirteenth-Century Ireland.
The Dublin Parliament of 1297, edited by James Lydon,
Dublin: Four Courts Press,1997.
See alsoCourts; ParliamentLÓEGAIRE MAC NÉILL
Supposed king of Tara, son of Niall Noígiallach, and
progenitor of Cenél Lóeguiri, a dynastic group which,
according to their own genealogical tradition, were
powerful in Ireland during the sixth and seventh cen-
turies, ruling territories which extended from Loch
Erne to the church of Rathlihen, north of the Sliabh
Bloom Mountains. The dynasty’s main power base
seems to have been near the church of Trim in modern
county Meath. Very little can be said with certainty
about Lóegaire because all accounts of his activities
considerably postdate his lifetime.
According to the annals and other sources, Lóegaire’s
floruit was in and around the second third of the fifth
century. However, there are some indications that he
may, in fact, have lived as early as the fourth century.
The fifth century chronology for Lóegaire may have
originated in the church of Ardbraccan, in Cenél
Lóegaire, which seems to be the source of the Lóegaire
episode in Tírechán’s late seventh century collection
of lore about St. Patrick. That church wished to