‘The Irish Pipe Roll for 14 John: Early Evidence for Bureaucratic Royal Government in Ireland’

We begin again our BAIS PhD bursary prize winners blog post series. Each year we ask our bursary prize winners to write up a short post on how they spent their bursary funds. This year we begin with PhD student Dan Booker (Bristol) who discusses his time spent at the Armagh Robinson Library.

The BAIS postgraduate bursary enabled me to visit the Armagh Robinson Library in Armagh, Northern Ireland. The purpose of my visit was to consult the only known example of a pipe roll produced by the Irish exchequer during the reign of King John (1199-1216). The document is vital to my thesis, which focuses upon King John’s relationship with the various exchequers within his domains and how this bureaucratic network facilitated or impeded the exercise of royal power (both within the Lordship of Ireland and the Angevin ‘empire’ as a whole).

The Irish pipe roll for the fourteenth exchequer year of John’s reign (1212) survives to us in the form of a seventeenth-century copy. The copy was itself commissioned at the behest of Sir James Ware (d.1666), a noted antiquarian. It is one of several manuscripts bound within a single volume that all relate to the history of English administration and governance in Ireland (such as the Magna Carta Hibernie, the Dialogus de Scaccario, and extracts from the Irish memoranda roll of 49 Edward III). After passing through the hands of various collectors, the volume containing the transcription was purchased by the Armagh Public Library (now the Armagh Robinson Library) in 1865.

The Irish pipe roll for 14 John is a unique and highly important document. The vast majority of the medieval governmental records of Ireland were held at the Public Record Office and thus lost when the Four Courts Building was destroyed in 1922 during the Irish Civil War. It seems that the pipe roll for 14 John was already long-gone by that date, however, having been lost or destroyed by the end of the seventeenth century at the latest. Correspondence regarding the records held at Dublin Castle reveals that by 1674 it was the only surviving exchequer roll from the period, as many administrative documents were stolen or damaged during the rebellion of 1641 or the period thereafter (Inner Temple Library: Petyt MS. 538/17). Indeed, it is possible that the document was the sole surviving roll from King John’s reign when the ‘original’ copy was commissioned by Sir James Ware (which could explain why it was selected for transcription in the first place).

A version of the document was published by the Ulster Journal of Archaeology in 1943, but there are some problems with the edition. Although the editors consulted the ‘original’ copy, they mostly worked from a copy of that copy. In addition, the layout of the modern edition obscures the arrangement and physical composition of the ‘original’ copy. As with any original document, it is best to return to the source (or, at least, as close to the original source as we can).

Without going into too much boring detail, a pipe roll is the record of the annual audit of royal debtors which took place at Michaelmas (29 September). Royal officials and debtors would appear before the Irish justiciar and the barons of the Irish exchequer at Dublin to account for royal income and expenditure, as well as the proceeds of justice and other sums that may have been offered to the king or his representatives in exchange for various benefits. The exchequer’s purview was not solely confined to finance, however. It was an omnicompetent court comprised of the greatest royal officials in Ireland. The Irish exchequer was also one node within a network of financial and administrative organisations that were structured in a similar manner and existed to serve one man: King John. The document itself contains a wealth of information regarding royal finances within the lordship, as well as the structure of governance within the territories under royal control, the contemporary legal system, and the extent of Anglo-Norman colonisation.

Yet there is still a great deal to be learned from the Irish pipe roll about Irish finance and administration during this period, as well as the place of the Lordship of Ireland within the Angevin ‘empire’. An in-depth study of the Irish exchequer’s origins, its relationship with the king and other administrative bodies during the period, and the role of the exchequer within the process that saw the Lordship of Ireland become an important and tightly-governed possession of the English kings will form an important chapter of my thesis.

I wish to extend my thanks to the BAIS for providing the funding that supported this research. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank the staff of the Armagh Robinson Library for allowing me to engage with this unique and important text, and for kindly supplying me with copious amounts of tea and cake!

The cover image is published with kind permission of the Governors and Guardians of Armagh Robinson Library.

Daniel Booker is a PhD student at the University of Bristol whose research focuses upon King John’s relationship with the various exchequers within his domains, and the extent to which that network of bureaucratic structures and institutions facilitated or frustrated the exercise of royal power.