Falkiner — The Counties of Ireland. 171 



provinces, subject to one suppression and some interchange of adjacent 

 territories, represent a very ancient native partition which in the 

 twelfth century was adopted for ecclesiastical purposes. The counties 

 and baronies, though principally based on groupings of native lordships, 

 are of Anglo-Norman origin, and range, in the date of their creation, 

 from the reign of King John to that of James I. The parochial 

 division is entirely borrowed from the Church, under which it wtis 

 matured probably about the middle of the twelfth century ; while the 

 townlands, the infima species, may reasonably be considered, at least in 

 part, the earliest allotment in the scale." 



With the two last of these grades of classification we have nothing 

 to do here. But a word must be said regarding the third. The 

 baronial division does not indeed present any veiy difficult problem. 

 For though it be not easy to account for the adoption of the term 

 "barony" as signifying the division of a county,^ seeing that it has 

 no such meaning in the territorial classification of Great Britain, there 

 is no doubt that in general the baronies were successively formed on 

 the submission of the Irish chiefs, the lands of each chieftain consti- 

 tuting a barony, and that they thus represent more nearly than any 

 other unit the ancient tribal territories. The origin of the parochial 

 system is much less easily traced ; and the relation between the 

 diocesan areas and the provincial or county divisions is a subject 

 which might well engage the attention of some of our ecclesiastical 

 antiquaries. 



The limits of the five kingdoms of what has been called the Irish 

 Pentarchy, into which. Ireland was anciently divided, correspond 

 closely to those of the provincial divisions, as the latter were main- 

 tained down to the seventeenth century. They represent, as 

 Dr. Eeeves has pointed out, " a very ancient native partition," the 

 adoption of which, in the twelfth century, for ecclesiastical purposes, 

 served to embalm a division of our island which, being based on no 

 great natui'al boundaries, must otherwise have perished. The five 

 provinces are shown separately as late as 1610 in Speed's map. For 

 it was not until late in the reign of James I. that Meath ceased to be 



1 " The cause of tlie difference in name between the Irish baronies and English 

 hundreds has been thus accounted for : When the kingdom of Meath was granted 

 to the elder De Lacy, shortly after the anival of the English, he portioned it out 

 among his inferior harons, to hold under him by feudal service, and hence their 

 estates natm-ally took the name of baronies, which gradually extended itself to 

 similar subdivisions of other counties." See Hardiman's " Notes to the Statute of 

 Kilkenny," in "Tracts relating to Ireland," ii., p. 108. 



[13*] 



