century. The earliest form was the post mill, a small
wooden-framed building, which pivoted on a large
upright beam (the post), and whose interior was
accessed by means of a ladder. The entire building was
turned so that the sails pointed into the wind. The
structures were usually built on low mounds and sur-
vive today as circular earthworks with a distinctive
internal cross pattern, which is all that survives of the
foundations. There is a fine example at Shanid, County
Limerick. The internal construction was much the
same as that of watermills except that the vertical shaft
fell downward to the stones. Tower windmills, consist-
ing of a circular stone tower with a rotating cap that
carried the sails, such as the example at Rindown,
County Roscommon, are not evidenced in Ireland until
the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Bridge
mills were built at Dublin despite the obvious dangers
that they posed in times of flooding. Although beer
mills, fulling mills, and iron mills, which used pound-
ers rather than rotary stones, are known from conti-
nental Europe by the eleventh century, there is little
evidence for them in Ireland prior to the sixteenth
century. Similarly, no evidence for boat mills is known.
JOHN BRADLEY
References and Further Reading
Bennett, Richard and John Elton. History of Cornmilling.Vol. 4,
Some Feudal Mills. London and Liverpool: Simpkin, Marshall
& Co., 1904. Reprint, Wakefield: EP Publishing, 1975.
Lydon, J. F. “The Mills of Ardee in 1304.” Journal of the County
Louth Archaeological and Historical Society19, no. 4
(1981): 259–263.
Rynne, Colin. “The Introduction of the Vertical Watermill into
Ireland: Some Recent Archaeological Evidence.” Medieval
Archaeology33 (1989): 21–31.
———. “The Craft of the Millwright in Early Medieval Mun-
ster.” In Early Medieval Munster, Archaeology, History and
Society, edited by M. A. Monk and John Sheehan, pp.
87–101. Cork: Cork University Press, 1998.
Walsh, Claire. Archaeological Excavations at Patrick, Nicholas
& Winetavern Streets, Dublin. Dingle: Brandon, 1997.
See alsoAgriculture; Diet and Food
MINING
SeeMetalwork
MODUS TENENDI PARLIAMENTUM
Modus Tenendi Parliamentum is a later medieval trea-
tise describing the workings of parliament. It exists in
both an “English” and an “Irish” version. Both claim
a spurious antiquity for their descriptions, perhaps in
order to enhance their authority. The longer English
version claims to be an account compiled for William
the Conqueror of how parliament had functioned in
the reign of Edward the Confessor; the shorter Irish
version to contain instructions from Henry II to his
Irish subjects on the holding of parliaments in Ireland.
The earliest surviving manuscripts of the English ver-
sion were probably written in the 1380s; the earliest
surviving manuscript of the Irish version is contained
in an official inspeximus dating from 1419, which
nowforms part of the Ellesmere manuscripts, at the
Huntington Library in California. Historians used to
believe that the English version itself belonged to the
1380s, but almost all modern historians (other than
Richardson and Sayles) have accepted Maud Clarke’s
arguments for composition in the 1320s on the basis
of similarities between the treatise’s description of par-
liament’s working and the workings of the English
parliament in that period, though not her specific sug-
gestion of a date of 1322. The Irish version probably
belongs to the early fifteenth century. Clarke suggested
a specific connection with Archbishop O’Hedigan of
Cashel (1406–1440). Sayles argued for a lost Irish
original treatise dating from shortly after 1381 behind
both English and Irish versions, but this view has not
met general acceptance. Historians have also disagreed
about the nature of the original treatise. Some have
argued for an underlying political purpose; others sug-
gested that it provided a generally honest, if sometimes
tendentious, description of parliament in the 1320s;
still others that it was intended only to provide an ideal
picture of how parliament ought to be run.
PAUL BRANDReferences and Further Reading
Clarke, M. V. Medieval Representation and Consent: A Study
of Early Parliaments in England and Ireland, with Special
Reference to the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum. London and
New York: Longmans Green, 1936.
Pronay, Nicholas, and John Taylor. Parliamentary Texts of the
Later Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press and New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980.
See alsoHenry II; ParliamentMO-NINNE (D. C. 517 OR 519)
She is the reputed founder and abbess of Cell Sléibhe
Cuilinn or Killevy in County Armagh, a prominent
monastery for nuns. Her original name was Darerca
(or Sárbile, according to the Martyrology of Oengus),
but she is better known by the hypocoristic Mo-Ninne
or Monenna. Her feast day is July 6. Killevy was
sacked by the Norse in 790 and again in 923; records
indicate that it survived as female monastic house well
into the twelfth century and afterward. By the sixteenth
century, it had become a convent for Augustinian nuns,
which was dissolved in 1542.MILLS AND MILLING