HERALD’S VISITATIONS IN IRELAND

By Fiona Fitzsimons

Above: The first page of Ulster King of Arms Nicholas Narbon’s report of his visitation to Dublin in 1568. (NLI)

The Anglo-Norman invasion introduced novel social and cultural practices into Ireland, including heraldry. In eleventh-century Europe, coats of arms developed out of military practice. Knights had to be able to distinguish friend from foe on the battlefield and in tournaments. The use of armorial bearings signalled the bearer’s status and nobility. Heraldic devices were a form of private property that could be inherited. By the fourteenth century, every European kingdom had its own ‘king of arms’ to control the use of heraldry within its jurisdiction.

In the medieval period, Gaelic Irish families began to adopt heraldry for their own use and benefit. The archaeological record shows some lordships using heraldic devices in their seals as early as the fourteenth century. By the fifteenth century many families had begun to incorporate coats of arms into their buildings and tombs. The earliest evidence for Gaelic lords using heraldic bearings in flags dates from 1542, when Sir John Travers, Master of the Ordnance, captured guidons of Maguire’s arms. By the 1540s, when the kingdom of Ireland was established, heraldry was already widely used by Gaelic Irish and Old English families alike.

In 1552 an Irish office of arms was established, presided over by the newly created Ulster King of Arms. The Irish office was created independently of the College of Arms in London. Almost immediately it faced the dilemma of how to control and regulate the use of arms in Ireland, where there were no surviving records or where no grant had been previously made. The office adopted a hybrid strategy: it drew on precedent to commence heralds’ visitations in Ireland and introduced a new custom, the confirmation of arms. If applicants could show that their family had used specific arms for 100 years or three generations, they could register.

We have surviving records of seven visitations in Ireland, but there may have been others of which no records survive.

Nicholas Narbon, Ulster (1566–88), completed four visitations:

  • Dublin, Meath, Kildare and Louth (1568–70)
  • Meath and part of Louth (1570)
  • Swords, Co. Dublin (1572)
  • Cork and Limerick (1574)

Daniel Molyneux, Ulster (1597–1629), completed three visitations:

  • Dublin (1607, 1610)
  • Wexford (1618)

We have limited evidence of how visitations were carried out in Ireland. A warrant issued in 1567 states that [Narbon] ‘intends to repair unto all parts … to visit and observe the arms … of all noblemen … and to correct all false armour and all such as without his consent to bear arms … except they be lineally descended of blood and names from such their ancestors as the law of arms they may of right bear and use, and also upon true certificate to have made to register all their arms, descents marriages of all nobles and gentlemen of the realm …’.

A capital grant of £65 from the Dublin administration to the Ulster King of Arms was probably intended to pay for the visitation. The wording of the warrant suggests that Ulster probably followed the protocol established by the College of Arms in England. The heralds rode out to meet the families and, for a fee, documented their arms, pedigrees and descents. The Heralds would then make fair copies, which were retained by the Office as a permanent legal record.

An examination of the fair copies surviving in the Genealogical Office (the successor body to the Office of Arms) reveals the Heralds Visitations survive as narrative accounts of descent, with some pedigrees and very few arms. In practice, there were significant differences between visitations in Ireland and elsewhere. The Irish visitations show that the heralds limited their activity to districts within the Pale or where English administration was firmly established. As the Tudor conquest intensified, visitations were halted. Noticeably, there were no visitations between 1574 and 1607.

Ireland’s Heralds’ Visitations have been digitised and are available online in three volumes:

Fiona Fitzsimons is a director of Eneclann, a Trinity College campus company. She teaches a two-year course in Irish Family & Social History in the College.