The County of East Meath

By Jay Fox Carney

The County of East Meath, more recently referred to as the County ‘Meath’, is 480 years old and was the first county-sized portion to have been annexed from the Royal County of Meath. The Kingdom and Province of Meath (Mide) had been abolished by the Norman King John and shired as one county at Rathwire Fort, Killucan in 1210. The county system was a Norman invention first introduced in England and Ireland after 1066 and 1167 respectively.

The Kingdom of Meath (Mide) was founded at the Hill of Uisneach around 300 BC and constituted one of the five kingdoms or provinces of Ireland, namely, Cúige Mide, Cúige Uladh, Cúige Mumhan, Cúige Laighean and Cúige Connacht (Cúige being Gaelic for a fifth). At its greatest extent, it stretched from the Leitrim, Cavan border in the north to Tipperary in the south, and from the River Shannon in the west to the banks of the Boyne at Clonard in the east. It had no sea boundaries.

From Drogheda in the east to Oldcastle in the west and as far south as what is now Trim, was the Kingdom of Brega.

South of Brega was the Kingdom of Deise Brega, which ran from the Boyne at Clonard to the Irish Sea including the Barony of Carbury (now in County Kildare), to the River Liffey in the south.

These two kingdoms were not in Meath until they were overrun circa 900AD by the three most powerful clans in Meath, ie, the McLoughlins, High Kings of Ireland and Meath, the O’Carneys, Princes of Teffia, and the Farrells, Princes of Annally (all of the Southern O’Neills, all Hy-Neill).

These three clans are direct descendants of King Maine, son of King Niall, AKA Niall of the Nine Hostages, all of pre-Christian origin.

It is documented that King Maine gave permission to St Patrick to preach the new religion at Ardagh Fort, now in County Longford, in the year 435 AD. It is said that King Maine himself did not convert.

The Tudor King, Henry VIII, and his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, had the greatest influence on the make-up of the kingdom and province of Meath today by making three counties out of the periphery of the kingdom of Meath. Namely, East Meath, shired by Henry VIII in 1542, King’s County (Offaly), shired by Queen Mary (the Catholic Queen) and her husband, King Phillip II of Spain (hence the king in King’s County) being the first county, along with Queen’s County (Laois), to have been planted in 1556.

Queen’s County (Laois), then a part of Ormond, was never located in either ancient province or later Kingdom of Meath (Mide) and in 1586 Queen Elizabeth I contributed to matters when Longford was shired as a county.

So then, in 1586 the original Meath was left intact and never actually shired as a county, but because the county system was in place, it was assumed to be a county.

The kingdom emblems are still represented on the cartouche, with two kingdom crowns guarded by an angel between the crowns and supported by two ladies. On the cartouche of East Meath there are neither crowns nor guardian angels, nor supporting ladies. There is on the Meath cartouche, a filing reference of the word west, not in front of Meath, in a much smaller and different font style.

So called academics and historians failed to identify this glaring difference and failed to see the other glaring difference of the east on the cartouche of East Meath. These symbols are on the Downes survey of Meath, there is no reference to west ahead of the word Meath on this survey. An erroneous office clerk’s filing reference, became the foundation on which to base Irish history?

King Henry VIII and his politician scribes were not historians and used the title ‘west’ loosely as a geographical reference. The closest partition to England named Meath and the rest referenced as west, the Atlantic Ocean was similarly referred to as the Western Ocean on all maps of the western seaboard up to the 1800s.

Before the Industrial Revolution all wealth was either above ground or underwater (ie, the best land to finish cattle, the best trout fishing lake, both of which are to be found within the environs of Mullingar). There is nothing else to fight over, the rest of the country was half empty, hence the plantations. There is no value on tourism until the Industrial Revolution, ie, railways and canals for transport to scenic areas.

It is ironic that my ancestors were the only clan to halt the Norman advance by the assassination of Hugh de Lacy at Durrow, then in Meath, in 1186. Now, 836 years later, I seem to be doing the same by trying to halt the confected history compiled by the inhabitants of what was the Pale, which for the first 700 years after the Norman advance was the America of its time, mostly populated by people from Yorkshire and Lancashire and the north of England.

After East Meath, Offaly and Longford were shired off the old Kingdom of Meath, the only part of the original Meath that was left was Meath and is on John Speed’s 1610 province map of Leinster, Sir William Petit’s Act of Settlement map of 1656/58 and Hermann Moll’s map of 1728 so, if I am wrong, I am in the company of these three luminaries.

King Henry II’s Liberty Gift of Meath in 1172 to Hugh de Lacy did not have the confidence of his son Walter when he abandoned construction of his castle (HQ) at Mullingar (best land/best fishing) and in 1210 commenced building his castle in the Liberty of Trim, 13 miles from the Dublin county border by land, 38 miles by land from where his father was killed at Durrow and more than 60 miles by land from the most southerly part of his so-called Liberty of Meath, now the Barony of Ballybrit on the Tipperary border, a statement of retreat rather than of confidence.

In summation, the old Kingdom of Meath is the only pre-Christian kingdom that still holds on to its name and was never shired as a county, merely called a county because of the system of the time.

I would prefer to be wrong; the implications of being right are so sad and with enormous implications for the history of Ireland.

It is in our destiny to explore and respect the truth, not to take refuge in fairytales. It is time to put an end to parrot learning. The raw material of honesty is the truth.

PS

I hope to host an open and honest debate with representatives from the second level institutes local to Mullingar: Coláiste Mhuire, Loreto Convent, Mullingar Community College, St Finian’s College and St Wilson’s Hospital School. At stake, a donation of €1,000 from myself to St Vincent de Paul if any of these educators can prove me wrong, to my satisfaction, on the central thrust of my argument as stated above.

PPS

All maps alluded to in the foregoing are on display at the Greville Arms Hotel, Pearse Street, Mullingar.

(All views and information are those of the author.)