Free Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History by Joseph Byrne Page B

1617). Only 35 not very reliable pages were dedicated to Ireland in the first edition of Britannia but accuracy improved in later editions when Camden was assisted by James Ussher.
    Campion, Edmund (1540–81). Campion, an English Jesuit martyr, wrote the Histories of Ireland in Dublin in 1569. It was first used by Stanihurst in Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577) and was published by Sir James Ware in 1633. The work is heavily pro-Old English as one might expect for Campion was a guest of Old English families for two years from 1570–1.
    canebeg . (Ir., cáin beag , small tax) A small tributary entitlement of the wife of a Gaelic lord out of certain lands.
    canon . 1: A priest who lived like a monk 2: In Ireland, a minor member of the cathedral chapter, such as the vicars choral but prebendaries were also canons. The canons were responsible for the conduct of religious services in the cathedral 3: A general ecclesiastical rule or decree governing the conduct of public worship 4: The list of acceptable scripture books.
    canonical portion . A kind of death duty levied by the church on a deceased woman. The taking of mortuaries on the death of married women was forbidden in 1621.
    canting . The auctioning of leases of land by private bids. In nineteenth-century Ireland this encouraged prospective tenants to bid beyond their means.
    cantred . A barony. In Irish, tricha-cét .
    cap . (usually c.). Chapter, as in 23 Vict., cap. 27 which means the twenty-seventh chapter of the statutes enacted in the twenty-third year of the reign of Queen Victoria. See regnal years.
    capell lands . Gaelic spatial measure. In Kilkenny, three capell lands were equivalent to a ploughland or about 100 acres. In Tipperary, the equivalent of 20 great acres, each acre containing 20 English acres. See great acre.
    capias . A writ commanding the sheriff to perform an arrest or seizure, so-called because the warrant contains the instruction ‘That you take’ or ‘Thou mayest take’. The four forms of capias were:
Capias ad respondendum, employed to compel attendance at court.
Capias ad satisfaciendum , after judgement, a warrant to jail a defendant until the plaintiff’s claim had been met.
Capias utlagatum, a warrant to arrest an outlaw. Capias in withernam, a warrant to seize the chattels of a person who has made an illegal distraint . See witherman.
    capital . The head of a column which is located at the top of the shaft.
    capital messuage . The manor house.
    capite, in . Land held directly from the crown without an intermediary ownership. The tenant was known as a tenant-in-chief or chief tenant and was liable for the feudal incidents of wardship, marriage, relief and escheat . Together with other ancient tenures, tenure in capite was abolished in 1662 (12 Chas. II, c. 24) by Charles II. See Tenures Abolition Act.
    capstone . The flat stone or cover-slab which was supported by a number of large vertical stones and covered in a mound of smaller stones to form a cairn.
    Capuchins . An austere, reforming offshoot of the Franciscans, the Capuchins (in full, the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, abbreviated OFM Cap.) were founded in 1525 and arrived in Ireland in 1615. They were committed to an even stricter adherence to the rule of poverty than the observants. The name derived from the four-cornered hood they wore, the cappuccio . See conventualism.
    Caravats and Shanavests . Two conflicting groups which flourished in Munster and some Leinster counties between 1806–11. Formerly regarded as a faction-fighting phenomenon, the struggles of Caravats and Shanavests is now interpreted as a physical expression of the tension that existed between landless labourers (Caravats) and small farmers (Shanavests). Economic factors such as the collapse of grain prices, a shift from tillage to livestock and a rise in cost and decline in availability of conacre land worsened the plight of labourers whose numbers had increased