8 



Committee, that he thought the probable amount to which the inland 

 fisheries of Ireland would be advantaged by a better legislation for their 

 protection, from the mouth to the source, might, steering clear of any 

 excess, be estimated at two millions sterling a year. After considerable 

 pains bestowed on the subject, Sir Richard calculated that the value of 

 the quantity of fish caught by every engine employed, about two years 

 since, amounted to close upon 300,000. 



CHAPTER II. 



ANCIENT HISTOET .AND LEGISLATION. 



VERY soon after the invasion of Ireland the fisheries of her 

 principal rivers attracted the notice of the crown, and the cupi- 

 dity of the great Norman barons. They were conveyed in early 

 charters as the appurtenances of the newly created baronial 

 tenures, in which rights in aquis, in ripariis, et in piscariis are 

 coupled with the prerogatives of " sac et soc, toll et them, in- 

 fangthef et out-fangthef," and the judgments of water, of iron, 

 and the duel, of the pit and the gallows. 



In the year 1216 King John was obliged to purchase from the 

 bishop of Limerick, by a charge of ten pounds of silver yearly 

 upon the assize of that city, the episcopal claim to the mill seats 

 and fishery there, which he had granted in 1202, to William 

 de Braose, lord of Bramber, in Sussex, together with the whole 

 of the shire ; * the bishop being said to ' falsely challenge' the 

 royal right. 



* ROYAL GRANTS The rich salmon fishery of Galway originally passed to 

 the earls of Ulster, under the grant of Henry III. , and thence descended to the 

 Mortimers. In 1386, it was demised to Richard Parys, a burgess of Bristol, 

 during the minority of its owner. 



Richard II., at the grievous complaint of Walter, baron of Athenry, that 

 certain Irish of Lower Connaught fished in his waters, commanded the sheriff 

 of Connaught and the corporation of Galway to prohibit that any one should 

 purchase salmon taken in those waters. 



An old map of the city of Galway shows the site of the original stake-dams, 

 called the Inchora-more, or island of the great weir. They were of Vandyke 

 form, with three bags. 



In the engraving of Cahir castle, given in the ' Paeata Hibernia,' from a plan 

 of that fortress as old as the sixteenth century, a weir is represented crossing one 

 arm of the river. In the plan of the city of Cork, of the same date, two men 

 are represented drawing a common draft-net, or seine, and the third rowing in 

 the cot. 



Henry IV., by patent, in the third year of his reign, granted to John Fitz- 

 maurice, baron of Kerry (ancestor of the Marquis of Lansdowne), the custody 

 of the fishery and profits of the water of Cassan. In 1616, his descendant de- 

 mised to Anne Lowe, one of the daughters of William Lowe, of Bristol, fish- 

 monger, ' all the fishings and fishing places of the rivers of Cassan and Feale, 

 in Clanmaurice, from the sea to Listowel, all in the river Geale, to the weir of 

 Dromurrin, and all in the Brough, and also all weirs, royalties, liberties, and 

 profits to the said fishings and fishing places belonging, with liberty to build 

 weirs on any part of the premises.' 



