History of Kilkenny

In the Late Middle Ages, 1320, the first recorded instance of a person being charged with witchcraft in Ireland was Dame Alice Kyteler, the only child of an established Hiberno-Norman family in Kilkenny. The trial of Alice, her son and ten others, for heresy, was of one of the earliest witchcraft accusations in Europe. It was the first known trial to treat women practising witchcraft as an organised group. While centuries before the more famous witch trials in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Pope John XXII had formalised the persecution of witchcraft in 1320 when he authorised the Inquisition to prosecute sorcerers.[12] While those accused of witchcraft were not tortured and executed on a large scale until the fifteenth century, in Kilkenny, those convicted were whipped and Petronilla de Meath, Alice's maidservant, was burned alive at the stake. She was the first case in Ireland's history of death by fire for the crime of heresy.

Dame Alice Kyteler was born in 1280 into the noble Kyteler family in Kilkenny. Alice was married four times, and each husband died. After her last husband Sir John le Poer died, her children accused her of using poison and sorcery to kill him, in the hope they would gain her fortune. The case was brought before the Bishop of Ossory, Richard de Ledrede and he found Alice and her followers rejected the Christian faith. The bishop wrote to the Chancellor of Ireland, Roger Utlagh or Outlawe to have Alice arrested. Outlawe was Alice's brother-in-law and he imprisoned the Bishop and Sir Arnold le Poer, the seneschal of Kilkenny. After seventeen days in prison, the bishop was released and continued to pursue and torture Alice's maidservant Petronilla de Meath. Alice and Petronilla's daughter, Basilia flee to the Kingdom of England. Petronilla was then forced to proclaim publicly that Alice and her followers were guilty of witchcraft. Her extracted confession included claims that she and her mistress applied a magical ointment to a wooden beam, which enabled both women to fly. She was then burned alive at the stake.

Hiberno-Norman Kilkenny presence in Kilkenny was deeply shaken by the Black Death, which arrived in Kilkenny in 1348. Because most of the English and Norman inhabitants of Kilkenny lived in towns and villages, the plague hit them far harder than it did the native Irish, who lived in more dispersed rural settlements.

A celebrated account from a monastery in Cill Chainnigh (Kilkenny), by Friar John Clyn in 1348 chronicles the plague as the beginning of the extinction of humanity and the end of the world.

The pestilence gathered strength in Kilkenny during Lent, for between Christmas day and 6 March, eight Friars Preachers died. There was scarcely a house in which only one died but commonly man and wife with their children and family going one way, namely, crossing to death.[13]

The plague was a catastrophe for the English habitations around the country and, after it had passed, Gaelic Irish language and customs came to dominate the country again. The English-controlled area shrunk back to the Pale, a fortified area around Dublin.

The city shield as carved on the Tholsel

The Statutes of Kilkenny were a series of thirty-five acts passed at Kilkenny in 1367, aiming to curb the decline of the Hiberno-Norman Lordship of Ireland. By the middle decades of the 13th century, the Hiberno-Norman presence in Ireland was perceived to be under threat, mostly due to the dissolution of English laws and customs among English settlers. These English settlers were described as "more Irish than the Irish themselves", referring to them taking up Irish law, custom, costume and language. The introduction to the text of the statutes claim;[14]

"now many English of the said land, forsaking the English language, manners, mode of riding, laws and usages, live and govern themselves according to the manners, fashion, and language of the Irish enemies; and also have made divers marriages and alliances between themselves and the Irish enemies aforesaid; whereby the said land, and the liege people thereof, the English language, the allagiance due to our lord the king, and the English laws there, are put in subjection and decayed".

— - Introduction to the Statutes of Kilkenny[14]

The statutes tried to prevent this "middle nation", which was neither true English nor (subjugated) Irish,[15] by reasserting English culture among the English settlers.

The statutes begin by recognising that the English settlers had been influenced by Irish culture and customs, as quoted above. They forebode the intermarriage between the native Irish and the native English, the English fostering of Irish children, the English adoption of Irish children and use of Irish names and dress.[16] Those English colonists who did not know how to speak English were required to learn the language (on pain of losing their land and belongings), along with many other English customs. The Irish pastimes of "horling" and "coiting" were to be dropped and pursuits such as archery and lancing to be taken up, so that the English colonists would be more able to defend against Irish aggression, using English military tactics.[17]

William Marshall, Lord of Leinster, had given Kilkenny a charter setting out the rights of its burgesses and freemen in 1207. Its first Council was elected in 1231 and since then Kilkenny has had a continuous record of municipal government. From the 13th century to the end of the 16th the chief magistrate was known as the Sovereign, and since then as Mayor, for its chief citizen.

Kilkenny Panorama with St Mary's Cathedral at the background

King James I of England granted Kilkenny a royal charter conferring the status of a City in 1609. A 17th-century description of the City of Kilkenny lies in a manuscript called De Ossoriensi Dioescesi,[18] which was a tract on the diocese of Ossary believed to be written by David Rothe the Roman Catholic Bishop of Ossary.[19]

The manuscript translates from Latin as;

Seated on the river Nore, which flows beneath two marble bridges distant from each other about two furlongs, its greatest length is from north to south. On the north stands boldly forth the large and magnificent cathedral church sacred to St. Canice, the abbot; southwards, and verging towards the east, rises the castle, or rather fortress guarded by many castles and bulwarks. From this twofold source sprang the civic community -the temple and the fortress were the nurses of its infancy – the civil and ecclesiastical polities contributing equally to the growth of its buildings. To the inquirer as to the period of its foundation I reply that it is coeval with the English conquest of Ireland.

— - Anonymous, De Ossoriensi Dioescesi[20]

Kilkenny is described as the City of Kilkenny or Kilkenny City but does not have a city council. The Local Government Act 2001 allows for the continued use of city;

"the continued use of the description city in relation to Kilkenny, to the extent that that description was used before the establishment day".

— - Local Government Act 2001[21]

James II and VII
King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, deposed by William in 1689, but supported by the mainly Catholic "Jacobites" in Ireland

James II of England's pro-Catholic and Pro-France policies provoked a revolt in England and the king fled to France. With the assistance of French troops in March 1689 James landed at Kinsale in Ireland[22] and via Kilkenny went to Dublin. The Irish Parliament declared that James remained King and passed a massive bill of attainder against those who had rebelled against him.[23] The Irish parliament declared the lands of Protestant supporters of William of Orange, such as James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, to be forfeit.[24]

James II of England spent most of the winter months from November 1689 until January 1690 at Kilkenny, residing in the castle[1] James worked to build an army in Ireland, but was ultimately defeated at the Battle of the Boyne on 1 July 1690 when William arrived, personally leading an army to defeat James and reassert English control.[25] After James's defeat at the Battle of the Boyne, his retreating army passed through Kilkenny on its way to Limerick and forced the citizens to pay protection money to save the city from looting.[26] James fled to France once more, departing from Kinsale, never to return to any of his former kingdoms.[25]

Kilkenny surrendered to the Williamites without firing a shot, and the propertied Old English families, who had supported James, lost everything.[27] The Williamite army, commanded by General Godert de Ginkel, camped beside Kilkenny making the city the winter headquarters from October 1690 until May 1691 when it moved on to besiege Limerick.[1]

During the late 17th century James II had urged the Irish Parliament to pass an Act for Liberty of Conscience that granted religious freedom to all Catholics and Protestants in Ireland.[28] He elevated the Catholic college into a university at the Royal College of St. Canice.[29] It took over the premises of Ormonde's grammar school at Kilkenny College. Six months later, after James's defeat at the battle of the Boyne, the university was forced to close.[24]

The office of Lord Lieutenant of Kilkenny was created on 23 August 1831. James Butler, 1st Marquess of Ormonde, John Ponsonby, 4th Earl of Bessborough, William Frederick Fownes Tighe, James Butler, 3rd Marquess of Ormonde and Hamilton Cuffe, 5th Earl of Desart held that office.