URBAN ADMINISTRATIONserve as chief governor—attempted to regain the “bon-
naght” of Ulster, which had been appropriated by the
Ua Néills. The Gaelic chiefs repeatedly promised to
render service. These promises were not made a reality,
but this was in part due to chance rather than impo-
tence. For instance, both the sixth (d. 1381) and eighth
(d. 1425) Mortimer earls died within two years of their
first successes in Ulster, with the result that the sub-
missions they had taken could not be given practical
effect.
In 1425, at the death of Edmund Mortimer, Ulster
passed to Richard, duke of York. When the house of
York came to the throne in 1461, Ulster became a
permanent appanage of the English crown. Proposals
for a reconquest appear in the accounts of the early
Tudor period but were not implemented. Nonetheless,
in 1541 when Conn Bacach Ua Néill suggested that
he be made earl of Ulster, Henry VIII strongly rebuked
him, reputedly calling Ulster one of the great earldoms
of Christendom and an ornament of the crown. The
Ua Néills were only made earls of Tyrone, and the
royal claim to Ulster continued to be a factor in crown
policy into the early modern period.
PETER CROOKS
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: Essays Presented to J. F. Lydon, edited by Terry
Barry, Robin Frame, and Katharine Simms, pp. 1–27. London:
The Hambledon Press, 1995.
MacNeill, T. E. Anglo-Norman Ulster: The History and Archae-
ology of a Medieval Barony. Edinburgh, 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 alsoBruce, Edward; Courcy, John de; John;
Lacy, Hugh de; Lionel of Clarence; Mac Donnell;
Mortimer; Ua Néill of Clandeboye
URBAN ADMINISTRATION
The practice of urban self-government in Europe long
predated the historical evidence for such activity. The
sense of community that made townspeople feel dif-
ferent from country people came in the first instance
from living together in even closer proximity and in
larger numbers, from the need to import most of their
food, and from a desire to protect wealth accumulated
by means of craftworking and trading. The urban
“community” (Latin communitas) included everyone
in theory, or at least all adult males. This is why open-
air assemblies were the norm in the early Middle
Ages;only later did urban administration become the
preserve of more exclusive groupings. Before the
Anglo-Norman invasion, the only real towns in Ireland
were the Hiberno-Norse trading settlements—few in
number and scattered around the coastline of the south-
ern half of the island. Being of Scandinavian origin,
they may have had an assembly (Norse thing) at which
decisions were reached collectively in accordance with
local custom. Only Dublin provides convincing evi-
dence: outside the town to the east there was an assem-
bly place or Thingmót, where warrior-merchants met
presumably under the presidency of the king, and pos-
sibly also of the bishop (later the archbishop) after
about 1030. That the townspeople came to think of
themselves as burgesses (Latin burgenses) is indicated
by a letter sent to the archbishop of Canterbury in- Eventually it may have become customary to
meet in a large hall, referred to by Giraldus Cambrensis
as the “court” (Latin curia). Modern archaeologists
have seen in the regularity of the house plots of
Hiberno-Norse Dublin a sign of some kind of regula-
tory authority in the period before the Anglo-Norman
takeover in 1170. The mint that was operating in
Dublin from 997 down to the 1120s must have had a
designated and publicly accessible location, possibly
in the precinct of Christ Church Cathedral. Collective
decision making, therefore, was a tradition rather than
a novelty by the late twelfth century, if only on a
limited scale.
The Formalization of Municipal
Self-Government
Many existing towns in western Europe came to
acquire more complete independence and more formal
recognition of that independence during the twelfth
and early thirteenth century. These developments—
more or less universal—happened to coincide with the
colonial process in Ireland. In addition, more towns
were founded in parts of the country, and, as else-
where, townspeople petitioned their rulers for charters
as expressions and guarantees of urban “liberty.”
There were two types of town: those (generally larger
towns) whose lord was the king of England and those
(generally smaller towns) whose lord was a lay or an
ecclesiastical aristocrat. For the former, the legal
model was Bristol in England; for the latter, the small
town of Breteuil-sur-Iton in Normandy. In a general
sense, however, Dublin acted as the chief role model in
Ireland, and its progress toward self-government is a
classic demonstration of the stage-by-stage process
whereby rulers made considerable sums of money by
granting concessions in a piecemeal fashion. Having
been selected by King Henry II as the main focus of
loyalty to the English crown in Ireland, Dublin was