People, Place and Power – The Grand Jury System in Ireland

5 Fig. 1. Fragmentary medieval parchment record burned in the Four Courts blaze of 1922. National Archives of Ireland, CB 1/4, membrane 1. English royal power in Ireland shrank during the later Middle Ages, although fragmentary court records that survived the Four Courts fire in 1922 show the reach of royal government extended well beyond ‘The Pale’ around Dublin. This parchment record from the end of the fourteenth century shows the sheriff of Cork active in 1397–8 (Fig. 1). Here the sheriff is ordered to arrest one ‘David fitz Richard’ and to keep him in prison until he can answer certain charges in court. The shiring of Ireland was only completed in the early seventeenth century following the Elizabethan wars of reconquest.