Statutes of Kilkenny - Background To The Statutes

Background To The Statutes

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,

... 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...

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

There were also military threats to the Norman presence, such as the failed invasion by Robert Bruce in 1315, which was defended by the Irish chief Domhnall Ó Néill in his Remonstrance to Pope John XXII, complaining that "For the English inhabiting our land ... are so different in character from the English of England ... that with the greatest propriety they may be called a nation not of middle medium, but of utmost, perfidy". Further, there was the de Burgh or Burke Civil War of 1333-38, which led to the disintegration of the estate of the Earldom of Ulster into three separate lordships, two of which were in outright rebellion against the crown.

The prime author of the statutes was Lionel of Antwerp, better known as the Duke of Clarence, and who was also the Earl of Ulster. In 1361, he had been sent as viceroy to Ireland by Edward III in order to recover his own lands in Ulster if possible and to turn back the advancing tide of the Irish. The statutes were enacted by a parliament that he summoned in 1366. The following year, he left Ireland.