16. The Hearth Money Roll of 1668-9

Diversion 16. Some of Dunlavin village’s earliest inhabitants: The Hearth Money Roll of 1668-9.

The present Dunlavin village was established circa 1660. The man responsible, Sir Richard Bulkeley, tried to attract Protestant settlers into the new foundation and, as early as 1664, there were ‘twenty severall’ Protestant families in the Dunlavin area.[1] In the seventeenth century, as nowadays, taxation was an ever-present reality and we have a summary of the Hearth Money Roll for Dunlavin.[2] Houses were taxed on the number of hearths/chimneys that they had. The list for Dunlavin was taken in 1668, but the roll itself was is dated 1669. By that time, when the hearth tax returns provide us with a demographic snapshot, Dunlavin was a small settlement with a Protestant church, a market and at least 39 households.[3] If we apply a conservative multiplier of 5 to this number, [4] we may conclude that the Protestant population of the village was circa 195. In addition, some homes may have contained Protestant servants,[5] which would have increased the Protestant population to a figure probably in excess of 200 at that time. Interestingly, the new settlement of Dunlavin had the highest number of taxpayers in the west of County Wicklow. Baltinglass had thirty-eight and Donard thirty.[6] The summary contains the number of households subject to hearth tax, but it also contains the names of the heads of those households with more than one hearth in their homes. Householders with only one hearth were not included. In Dunlavin, twenty-eight houses had one hearth (nine of which had no chimney) – the names of the taxpayers with more than one hearth are listed below with the number of hearths in the house given after each name:

Roger Lawrence, 2.
Matt Cope, 2.
Carill, 5.
Owen Hughes, 5.
Smith, 2.
Rice Winne, 3.
Moore, 2.
Thady Moren, 2.
Lee, 2.
Jona Woodman, 2.
Mainwaring, 2.

In addition to the above data for Dunlavin itself, Tober had eight hearth taxpayers (all without chimney), Upper Crehelp had twenty-one (also all without a chimney), Lower Crehelp had sixteen (one of which had a chimney), Lemmingstowne [Lemonstown] had one (without a chimney) and Morginstown [Merginstown] had eleven (two with a chimney, eight without and one with two chimneys, which belonged to Jos. Pearson). Rathsallagh was listed in Moone parish, and seven taxpayers (two with a chimney, three without and two with more than one chimney – Wm. Reeves with 5 and Jo. Williams with 2).[7]

The eleven names listed above belong to some of the first people to settle in the new village in the 1660s. Most of Dunlavin’s 39 hearth taxpayers in 1668-9 were probably Protestants, since they were more likely to own better houses with more hearths, and thus more likely to be caught in the tax net. Also, it is probable that they were clustered into small urban or quasi-urban areas (Dunlavin being a case in point) and it was easier and cheaper to levy the tax in such areas. [8] A brief surname analysis of the list above suggests that there were indeed many Protestant taxpayers, but names such as Carill, Moore and Moren point to the existence of a native Irish Catholic population in the region too.

A number of Catholic inhabitants certainly remained in the Dunlavin area in the seventeenth century. In 1692, Fr. Laurence O’Toole of the Glen of Imaal hid his vestments and altar vessels while ‘on the run’.[9] However, of twenty-two Catholic priests recorded in County Wicklow in 1697, two of them, Fr. Patrick Haggan and Fr. Brian, were based in Dunlavin, suggesting that its Catholic population was more substantial than that of neighbouring Hollywood for example, where only one priest, Fr. Kernan, was recorded.[10] One thing is certain – household foundation subsequently accelerated in Dunlavin, and by the end of the century there were probably well over 100 families resident in and immediately adjacent to the village. In the eighteenth century Dunlavin would continue to grow, becoming a leading market town within its agricultural hinterland.

ENDNOTES

[1] Bodleian Library Oxford, Petition of Sir Richard Bulkeley, MS Carte 159, f. 90v.

[2] Liam Price, ‘The Hearth Money Roll for County Wicklow’, in The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, lxi (1931), pp 164-78.

[3] Hearth Money Roll, County Wicklow 1669 (N.L.I., MS 8818 [G.O. 667]).

[4] In the mid-seventeenth century, Petty estimated a figure of 5.5 per house. Gervase Parker Bushe, ‘An essay towards ascertaining the population of Ireland’, in J. Lee (ed), The population of Ireland before the nineteenth century (Farnborough, 1973), p. 151. Over a century later, Bushe suggested a figure of over 6.2 per house. ‘An essay towards ascertaining the population of Ireland’, p. 147.

[5] Bulkeleys’ servants and tenants, in most cases of Welsh extraction, feature in the 1641 depositions. The mention of Welsh tenants is interesting as the Welsh branch of the Bulkeley family maintained some links with Ireland during Bulkeley’s life and even after his death. The Diary of William Bulkeley, Brynddu, Llanfechell, i (University of Wales, Bangor [U.W.B.]) contains the following entry for 2 Apr 1739: ‘Paid petty constable for this parish 1s. 10d… towards repairing of hall and transporting vagabonds over to Ireland’. Incidentally, the Welsh Bulkeleys also took a dim view of Catholics and Catholicism. When speaking of a Welsh wake on 24 Mar 1738, William Bulkeley recorded that ‘there was used on this occasion that Popish superstition of this country of giveing meat and drink and money over the corps’. Diary of William Diary of William Bulkeley, i (U.W.B., f. 323). There were not many Catholics in the area inhabited by the Welsh Bulkeleys however. The Manuscripts of the House of Lords 1689-1710, (London, 1900), p.417, contains the following reference from Lord Bulkeley of Anglesey, written on 2 Feb 1705 from Barronhill: ‘We are happy in this county that we have never a papist but one, and he is a person of a mean fortune and an old man’!

[6] Hearth Money Roll, County Wicklow 1669 (N.L.I., MS 8818 [G.O. 667]).

[7] The roll for County Wicklow was copied by William Monck Mason, sometime before his death in 1859. Price, ‘The Hearth Money Roll for County Wicklow’, p. 173.

[8] Brian Gurrin, A century of struggle in Delgany and Kilcoole: An exploration of the social implications of population change in North-East Wicklow 1666-1779, (Dublin, 2000), p. 12.

[9] Patrick Laurence O’Toole, History of the Clan O’Toole and other Leinster septs (Dublin, 1890), p. 581.

[10] County Wicklow Heritage Project, The last county: the emergence of Wicklow as a county 1606-1845 (Wicklow, 1993, reprinted 2006), p. 21.