One of the most important books released by the Clogher Historical Society is to launched at the Society's AGM next Tuesday, 1st April at 8.00pm.
Members will gather at the Fermanagh Trust offices in Enniskillen where following the AGM, Abstracts of Chancery Inquisitions of the Seventeenth Century for Counties Fermanagh and Monaghan will take centre stage at 9.00pm. The author, Donald M. Schlegel, of Columbus, Ohio, will be present to give a talk on his work and the launch is open to anyone with an interest in history.
Schlegel has, in recent years, been a prolific contributor to the society's annual publication, the Clogher Record, and has written extensively on aspects of the early modern history of the diocese. His work is invariably diligently researched, clearly written and highly rated by historians.
Dr Éamonn Ó Ciardha of the University of Ulster comments that this translation of the Chancery inquisitions 'fits firmly into a scholarly tradition of retrieval and interpretation' alongside historians such as A.R. Hart, Jon G. Crawford, Thomas O'Connor and Jane Ohlmeyer.
Schlegel's introduction describes how the Chancery inquisitions were 'official inquiries by which the chancery and the exchequer in Dublin were informed about the ownership of land.
A county jury would be assembled to hold the inquisition, composed of those most likely to be able to testify knowledgeably about the ownership of a particular parcel of land.
The main purpose of the inquisition was to ensure that the crown did not lose any revenue to which it was entitled by law... Those of the seventeenth century for Leinster and Ulster were published by command of King George IV as Inquisitionum in officio rotulorum cancellariae Hiberniae asservatorum repertorium. Volume II, Ulster, was published in 1829.' Copies of the 1829 publication are difficult to locate and, as most of the inquisitions were in Latin, Schlegel's abstracts, translated into English, make this valuable source accessible for the first time to a much wider audience.
As well as providing details of the ownership of forfeited plantation lands, the inquisitions are a fantastic source of information on place-names.
Some of these have long since fallen into obscurity and refer to minute parcels of land within the towns or to sub-denominations of modern townlands.
The book is enhanced by the inclusion of two important sets of 17th century barony maps, those by Josias Bodley (1608-9) from the UK National Archives and by William Petty (1657), courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
These beautiful colour maps have been reproduced at A3 size, allowing the townland names to be accurately read.
