ADAM'S THE LIBRARY COLLECTION 29th April 2025

82 136 SIR WALTER RALEIGH (1554 - 1618) Indenture document, 1st February 1589 (dated 1588 to page) One page on vellum, c.43 x 70cm (irregular) Signed by Robert Reve to bottom left Mounted and framed (70 x 98cm) Lacking seals € 10,000 - 15,000 Indenture, issued 1 February 1589, in the 31st year of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, as she confirms an agreement between Sir Walter Raleigh, one of the principal agents of repopulating unclaimed lands in Counties Cork and Waterford, and Robert Reve and his wife Alice, of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, granting Robert and Alice 400 acres of ploughland and associated rights at Corrofin, Cluaine and Poulnalour in the Barrony of Inchiquin (Co. Clare). William and Alice will appear in the manor court twice a year, and pay a monetary rent, which will be modified in 1593 and on the death of Katherine, Dowager Countess of Desmond, plus a render of two capons or hens at Easter and the feast of St Michael (29 September). William and Alice shall also erect a manor house on the lands. Walter appoints Andrew Colthurst, Robert Mawle, and Michael Butler his agents in the transaction. We would like to thank Dr. Mark Faulkner, Trinity College Dublin, for his assistance in the cataloguing of this lot. Following his knighthood in 1585, Raleigh received 40,000 acres in the Munster Plantation including the coastal town of Youghal, where he served as mayor from 1588 – 89, and where his manor Myrtle Grove still stands to this day. Queen Elizabeth had begun a year earlier to survey land in Ireland to be divided amongst her undertakers. The Munster Plantation of the 1580s was instituted in part as punishment for the Desmond Rebellions, an insur- rection lead by Geraldine Earl of Desmond against English interference in Munster. In 1584, the Surveyor General of Ireland, Sir Valentine Browne and a commission surveyed Munster, to allocate confiscated lands to English Un - dertakers, wealthy colonists who “undertook” to import tenants from England to work their new land. The English Undertakers were obligated to develop new towns, employ English farming methods and provide for the defence of planted districts from attack. Within the first three years of his grant, Raleigh installed at least 148 tenants. In this present indenture between Raleigh and Robert Reve, he is granting him and his wife Ann, land in the barony of Inchiquin, Co. Clare. Their rent will be revised after a period of four years and upon the death of Lady Katherine Fitzgerald, Countess of Desmond. She is referred to in the present document as ‘oulde countess dowager’ a nickname popularised by Sir Walter Ra- leigh due to her longevity, with a recent biography putting her at 90 years old when she died. The Countess’ husband, 11th Earl of Desmond, had granted her a life tenancy in Inchiquin Castle. Upon the Countess Desmond’s death, the castle was to revert to the line of the Earls of Desmond. In 1575, she passed title to the castle and lands in trust, to the incumbent earl, Gerald FitzGerald. When the lands were leased to Raleigh following the Desmond Re - bellions, he continued to preserve this position of the Countess and allow her to remain in the castle until her death. Raleigh, an entrepreneurial character, used the land to also harvest forests but his estates proved to be ultimately unprofitable, and he sold the lands in 1602 to Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork for £1,500. Settlement by the English in Ireland was not novel in the sixteenth century. Since the 11th century Englishmen and their descendants had lived in Ireland. However, by the 16th century there was re-evaluation of English ruling pol- icy in Ireland. Considerable threats existed since the time of Henry VIII to traditional English power, in particular lack of control by England over large parts of the country; raids from Gaelic lords into the Pale and an increasingly Gaelicised Anglo-Irish population. The English monarchy and its agents in Ireland proposed plans for an organised settlement of Ireland, which would see it become a central component of England, and later, in Britain’s burgeoning modern empire.