ABSTRACT
It is with 1169 and the consequent Norman settlement that we find the establishment of a network of nucleated settlements throughout most of Ireland. However, along with the introduction of the typical medieval village with the homes of the peasants grouped around the church and the manor house, so typical of settlements in lowland England at that time, we also have the setting up of what Glasscock called ‘rural boroughs’.1 Although this term is not wholly satisfactory2 it is a convenient one to describe settlements no larger than a contemporary English village but which possessed a charter of rights confirmed on the burgesses either by the Crown or, more commonly in Ireland, by great lords. These rights or liberties’ were usually modelled on the charter given to the small town of Breteuil in Normandy in which the inhabitants were given their own court and the right to tax themselves outside the feudal jurisdictions that covered the rest of Anglo-Norman Ireland. As Otway-Ruthven has remarked, the proliferation of these charters was obviously intended to entice intending settlers away from over-populated England into the ‘new frontier’ of Ireland.3 This was nothing new in medieval Europe as exactly the same process was being encouraged in the newly conquered Slavic territories of the East.
