At a time of acute need for the King, these Irish revenues played no small part in the King's financial calculations. All told, our record lists fines of 3960 marks and £100 (£2640 all told), and commands distraint of a further 1300 marks and £100 of debts (£966) for which accounts were still owing: a total value in excess of £3600. The first is that Ireland continued to represent a major source of revenue and patronage to the King, albeit of patronage shared out amongst what was already a close-knit colonial community. K.H.II.24 p.1 (detail)Īmongst the wider themes that our record helps us to address, two in particular stand out. The opening of Sir James Ware's copy of the (now lost) Irish Pipe Roll 14 John (1211-12): Armagh Public Library ms. 3 Many of the men or families whose names appear below enjoyed thirty or more years of connection to John, from the time of his first Irish expedition of 1185. As the present record reveals, although generally ignored or only cursorily regarded by the King's modern biographers, Ireland remained of keen interest to John thereafter. 2 Its creation reminds us of the significant role that Ireland had played in the early years of King John. 1 The Irish Exchequer that produced the Pipe Roll, and that is referred to below as hearing accounts (no.1) was itself perhaps a fairly recent innovation, first definitely referenced in 1200. These include a unique copy, once belonging to Sir James Ware (1594-1666), of the Irish Pipe Roll for the year 14 John (1211-12). From that great bonfire of Irish public records very little remains, save for antiquarian transcripts fortuitously preserved elsewhere.
Whatever evidence of these transactions survived in Ireland itself, up to and including the lost Irish Pipe Roll 17 John, went up in flames when the Dublin Four Courts were bombarded at the start of the Irish Civil War, on 29-30 June 1922. The fines and commands assembled below into a single letter addressed by King John to the archbishop of Dublin supply important evidence of the King's dealings with Ireland in the winter of 1215.
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