380 Proceedings of the Roijal Irish Academy. 



AwiiiUiie ill 12G4. LiuuLnice was at Ardgonel in Conuacht in 1280, and 

 tlie title is very common in Leinster. ' 



Noi'denskiold attributes the knowledge of the North of Europe in the 

 portolans to tlie notes gathered by Mediterranean skippers in Flanders. 

 Ho states that tlie trade began in 1262, ' but the " Calendar of Documents 

 relating to Ireland " shows Flemish merchants in our island so early as 1234, 

 when the French merchants were arrested, and the Flemings ordered to be 

 left unmolested. In 1293, Edward I gave safe conduct to the merchants of 

 Flanders in Ireland and elsewhere. Two years later Giles de Courtray of 

 Bruges was accused of having hides and wool laid up in the houses of various 

 Irish merchants at Thomastown, Kilkenny, and Dublin, while Dedrich Toby n, 

 John Tobyn, and Koger Bongre of Bruges had similar deposits in Dublin, 

 Eosponte, and Kilkenny. Another Fleming, Terry de Edingeham, was buying 

 up wool so far inland as Cashel ; and John la Mer of Flanders had deposited 

 his goods with Eobert le Kyteler (a member of a family that produced the 

 famous witch) in Kilkenny. Next year, however (1296), the king gave full 

 leave to them to trade in Ireland ; this was only fair reciprocity, as his Irish 

 subjects (even in 1252) brought hides called " Ulvesters " to Flanders, and 

 also wool." In 1273 Irish wool was taxed at Bruges, and in 1300. At the 

 time when some of the Flemings were driving their surreptitious trade in 

 wool and hides in Leinster and Muuster, others, like Eeginald de Bark of 

 Flanders, kept the wines of the foreign merchants in Dublin. John de 

 Coudraye of Bruges complained in 1297 that Hugelin Pere and Hugelin Teste 

 of Lucca detained a debt, so the Government, consistent in its favours, ordered 

 that all persons in Ireland owing debts to the merchants of the Count of 

 Flanders should be distrained to pay them.^ Far later, about 1420, the 

 markets of Brabant were attended by Irish merchants, who brought quantities 

 of salt hides thither.^ This may have affected the. second type of maps, but 

 their origin is far less obvious than that of the earlier portolans. 



Florence.— We feel that we have a full explanation for the minute 

 knowledge of the Irish coasts shown by the early fourteenth-century map- 

 makers, if we can only establish the existence of Florentines in Ireland. The 

 lovely city of the Arno, in commerce, as in literature and art, exhibited great 

 progressiveness. It employed Venetian map-makers; and its archives 



1 Nordenskiold, Tenpins, p. 85 (citing Anderson, " Origin of Commerce," 1787, vol. i, pp. 225- 

 278). 



2 "Making of Ireland" (citing CiH. Bruges, vol. i, p. 87, and Eudolph Haphe's Bruges 

 Mntwicklioig, p. 72). 



3 Generally see Cal. Doe. Ir., Pat., Judiciary, Plea;nnd Pipe Rolls, Black Book o£ Limerick, 

 Registers o£ Dublin Abbeys ; but all Anglo-Irish records afford evidence of the ubiquity of the 

 riemings in every walk of life in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 



* " The Libel of English Policy," Hakluyt's '• Principal Navigations." 



