Brepols Publisher has released Beyond Exclusion in Medieval Ireland: Intersections of Ethnicity, Sex, and Society Under English Law (2022), by Stephen Hewer (University of Liverpool). A description from the Press:
The notion that all Gaelic peoples were immediately and ipso facto
denied access to the English royal courts in Ireland, upon the advent of
the English in 1167, has become so accepted in academic and popular
histories of Ireland that it is no longer questioned. This book tackles
this narrative of absolute ethnic discrimination in thirteenth- and
early fourteenth-century English Ireland on the basis of a thorough
re-examination of the Irish plea rolls. A forensic study of these
records reveals a great deal of variation in how members of various
ethnic groups and women who came before the royal courts in Ireland were
treated. Specifically, it demonstrates the existence of a large, and
hitherto scarcely noticed, population of Gaels with regular and
unimpeded access to English law, identifiable as Gaelic either through
explicit ethnic labelling in the records or implicitly through their
naming practices.
More information is available here. (h/t New Books Network.)
-- Karen Tani
