Tipperary's priceless archives - the faded ink of 300 years ago

Last week, I had the pleasure, and the privilege, of looking at the faded ink and frayed 180-page manuscript, the Minutes of Clonmel Corporation from early 1692 until 1711. The pages, which may have originally been enclosed within hard covers, have been in private hands, and are thus a missing module in the archives of local governance in Tipperary. It is understood that a ceremony will be held in the Town Hall to welcome the manuscript back into the records of the Local Authority.

The rescue of the manuscript (for that is what it was!) is directly traceable to the keen eye of Councillor Michael Murphy. He, while looking through a catalogue of forthcoming auctions in Dublin, saw the Clonmel connection, and realising the relevance of the documents in the context of the history of the town, decided that whatever the cost, they had to be brought back to where they originally belonged. He anticipated that, in the world of private collectors, there was a possibility of competitive pricing.

Councillor Murphy approached Tipperary County Council. An agreed sum of money was allocated to the purchase, but he, anticipating that the going auction price, depending on the competition, might be more, arranged for corporate sponsorship. But all went well. The price came within the sum allocated by the Council.

The opening and faded-ink pages of the manuscript are understandably fragile but still easily legible, and that legibility improves in the ensuing pages. It is obvious that much restoration and conservation work will have to be carried out before it can be opened to scholarly research.

The manuscript is very important in the history of Clonmel. It covers a very turbulent period, from the post Cromwellian conquest to the Restoration. England’s civil wars had drifted into Ireland. Europe had been torn apart in the Thirty Years War, which some would say continued for many more decades and only ended with the Battle of the Boyne. (There are some who would even say that there was an echo of that terrible period in the recent Troubles in Northern Ireland).

In Clonmel the old order had ended. The traditional ruling families, which had given merchants and mayors and employers and priests and scholars over the centuries to the town, had been banished from their Franciscan and Old St. Mary’s churches; their properties usurped. A new dispensation had taken over, one which proved in time to be surprisingly entrepreneurial, establishing businesses and a thriving export trade in wool and hides and friezes. As times changed and the Cromwellian Commonwealth of which they were supporters, became engulfed by the Restoration, they had no difficulty in realising which side their bread was buttered on and thus changed their allegiances again.

This was the time when names like Fletcher, Moore, Beere, Laughton, Baskerville entered the dictionary of family names in the town, while the old families had fled or retreated to the suburbs. Canon Burke in his “History of Clonmel” has written that the “new settlers were acquiring riches, purchasing lands and founding families,” while “the old natives of the town, Whites, Barrons, Stritches, Brennocks, looked on with hungry eyes from their cabins in Irishtown, Old Bridge and other suburbs.” They were also gathering, when it was safe to do so, around their “Mass House” in Irishtown (now St. Mary’s Church).

This is the period which is partly covered in the manuscript which has now returned to the town. It will require much study and indeed some time before we can read the precise contents. I am, however, very grateful to the Council’s archivist who has taken a very quick overview - a here and there superficial glimpse through the faded ink, and has given me some idea of the governance of the town by the Corporation in the late 17th and early years of the 18th centuries.

It seems, with a few odd exceptions, the Council’s business then was not too far removed from that which would occupy it today. The Jacobite/Williamite wars ended in 1691 (the Battle of the Boyne) and Clonmel Corporation pragmatically supported the winning side - the Williamites. Before that, they had lit bonfires in 1685 to mark “the happy return of his majesty.”

Concentrating on the strictly local, in August 1696, they were thanking Stephen Moore for “his kindness to this Corporation, hath this day given to the town a bowling green and alley 70 yards in length and 60 yards in breadth for the Greene of Clonmel and a dozen paire of bowls.”

In the same year they were demanding that “every inhabitant leasing property is responsible to keep it swept and clean free of dung and dirt.” 

There is a reference to road building and bridge maintenance - “Mrs Comerford’s Bridge” in June 1703, and a road construction “to spa well at foot of mountain” on the 2nd August 1693.

In 1694 permission was given to Capt. Thomas Baskerville to “dig for coal.” (The exact location not specified).

The ‘papists’, obviously, had to be kept under strict supervision and in 1696 the Corporation ordered that “all papist houses to have soldiers quartered for preventing cabals and meetings.”

Clonmel during the post Cromwell and Restoration decades had a large population of military. The soldiers were not accommodated in barracks but were quartered on the inhabitants. In 1691 the Corporation recorded that “The Danish Blue Regiment garrisoned in Clonmel: No certificate to be issued to them for their good behaviour.” Obviously the boys had been a bit drunk and disorderly.

Perhaps the most unusual minute (in the modern context) was that dated 8th February 1687 which stated that “Any pregnant woman unmarried, is brought before the Mayor, asks to give account of the father, and if does not, is committed until she discover the father.”

And there is more, much much more.

Tipperary County Council and Councillor Michael Murphy, must be congratulated for bringing back to Clonmel, this most fascinating manuscript which will expand our knowledge of the story of our town.