Nostalgia: Anniversary of Cork’s first charter celebrated

He would soon sign Cork city’s original charter, but when Prince John of England arrived in Ireland in April of 1185, the youngest son of Henry II and Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine was only 19, and his visit was about to descend into fiasco.

The fledgling prince had been nicknamed Jean sans Terre, or John Lackland, because, as a younger son of the king, it was never expected he would inherit anything of significance, or amount to much. That changed, however, when a dispute about land led to a rupture in the family.

The seven-year-old John emerged from the failed revolt of 1173-1174 his father’s favourite. That rebellion came after John’s mother and three brothers sided against the king over his decision to bequeath to John as a wedding present three castles which had been due to go to the heir apparent, known as Henry the Young King.

During the ensuing conflict, John spent much time with his father, and observers noted they grew close. The family eventually patched up their differences, to a degree, but Eleanor would remain imprisoned until 1189, after her husband’s death. Before that, though, in 1177, Henry dismissed William FitzAldelm as Lord of Ireland, appointing the 10-year-old John as his replacement.

Families being complicated, Henry the Young King went briefly to war against his brother Richard — later known as Cœur de Lion or the Lionheart — in Limousin in 1183. The king backed Richard, and when Henry the Young King died, aged 28, of dysentery contracted on the battlefield, Richard became heir.

However, when Richard refused to give up his lands in Aquitaine to John, Henry II ordered John, then 18, and his older brother Geoffrey to march against him. That conflict ended in stalemate, and at the end of 1184 the family again came to an uneasy reconciliation.

King of Ireland 

The following spring, John made his first visit to Ireland, accompanied by 300 knights and a team of administrators. His father had tried to have John declared King of Ireland, but Pope Lucius III would have none of it, so the prince had to make do with the title Lord of Ireland. John’s expedition arrived in Waterford in April, 1185, and it quickly became a fiasco, with the inexperienced young prince managing to insult pretty much everyone he met. Tempers were still high after the recent Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland, and there were tensions between Henry II, the English settlers, and the native Irish.

Into this John and courtiers waded, making fun of the local chieftains for their unfashionably long beards, going so far, it was said, as pulling on their whiskers. The priest and historian Gerald of Wales, accompanying the royal visit, recorded that the Irish rulers reported to their kings that John was “an ill-mannered child from whom no good could be hoped”.

From Waterford, John headed for Dublin, and along the route, his expedition built two significant castles, at Ardfinnan, and at Lismore. It was during a brief stay at Ardfinnan Castle that John issued several royal charters, among them one declaring himself ‘King of Limerick’. Fifteen years later, he would order the building, on the ruins of an old Viking settlement, of Limerick’s King’s Island, the castle that to this day bears his name.

It seems likely that it was at Ardfinnan that John signed the charter for Cork. The document is believed long lost to antiquity.

John returned to England before the year’s end, having run out of money, after alienating Irish and English alike, losing most of his army in battle or to desertion, as well as considerable ground to the rebelling Irish. He blamed it all on the king’s viceroy, Hugh de Lacy.

Henry II died in 1189, and Richard I succeeded him, almost immediately departing for the crusades, so naturally John attempted a rebellion in his brother’s absence.

A decade into his reign, Richard was putting down a revolt in Limousin when he was struck in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt. The wound became gangrenous, and he died, aged 41, without any legitimate successor. Thanks in no small part to Eleanor’s campaigning, John succeeded him.

A spiteful, petty, and cruel man, John is not remembered as a good king, and his reign was marked by war with France and a rebellion by his own nobles, who were not pleased by his fiscal policies.

The Magna Carta was drafted as a peace treaty, but civil war broke out and John contracted dysentery on the battlefield in Nottinghamshire. He died in 1216, at the age of 49. He was succeeded by his nine-year-old son, Henry III.

Robin Hood

Nowadays, King John is remembered mostly as a villain in the folklore and popular culture around Robin Hood.

Cork’s first charter was granted by Prince John of England, who was then Lord of Ireland, some time during his disastrous 1185 visit to Ireland. It seems likely, though not certain, it was at Ardfinnan Castle in Co Tipperary, where he is known to have signed a slew of such charters.

Former lord mayor of Cork and Independent councillor Kieran McCarthy has researched the many charters granted to Cork over the centuries, and in 2022 he wrote a book called Celebrating Cork.

“It allowed me to go down the rabbit-hole of the charters a little bit. There have been 17 charters, and maybe one or two survive in the British Library,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the original charter has long since disappeared.”

In the early 2000s, he visited the local studies department in Bristol to research that original charter.

“On the original charter it said we’re granted the same privileges and customs as the people of Bristol, which was the staging point of the Anglo-Norman attack on Ireland, and anything that was going to be created in Ireland was going to be mirrored on customs and practices in Bristol.

“In a nutshell, the charters gave us a marketplace, gave us a mayor, a sheriff, the corporation of Cork, and added status to any of the merchants who lived and traded within the walled town itself.”

Mr McCarthy noted that the signing of the charter in 1185 came very recently after the Anglo-Norman conquest of 1169, taking over the Viking-age town of Cork and rebranding the Hiberno-Norse town as an Anglo-Noman town.

Cork 800

“The Cork 800 celebrations in 1985 allowed us to look in more detail at what 1185 and that era were about,” he said. “Since 1985, we have discovered so much about that period and the history of Cork after that, through archaeological digs.

“In maybe the early 1200s they built a town wall around the area of South Main St, and in the early 1300s they built a town wall around the North Main St area, this has all been discovered since 1985.”

• Next Saturday: How Cork celebrated the 800th anniversary of its original charter.