ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the refurbishment of book shrines during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries and the emergence of the pailís, c.1300, as significant material expressions of erstwhile kingship, by Gaelic lords. The centralising administration of King Edward I in Ireland, between 1272 and 1307, determined to disable the authority of all Gaelic kings, irrevocably. This process is reflected in Crown documentation which, soon after 1300, addresses major Irish leaders as duces rather than reges and sometimes just by their names with the distinguishing qualification hibernicus. The synonymy between the moated site and the pailís observed in the chapter broadens the debate to include moated sites found in areas where Gaelic lords stayed on their lands and paid rent to Anglo-Norman overlords. The geography of the majority of pailís locations is liminal suggesting, perhaps, that they were intended as feasting venues marking key frontier areas, and boundary zones of sept lands and nascent Gaelic lordships.
