EARLY GRIBBINS

by | Jun 3, 2024 | Uncategorized

EARLY GRIBBINS

The image above is a drawing made in 1521 by Albrecht Durer of Irish kern and gallowglasses.

Hi – it’s been a while since I last added something to this blog. Sorry about that – I’ve been busy!

Today, I want to look at the earliest Gribbins on record. They are as follows:

1602 – Owin and Henry O Gribin – Inishowen, Donegal

1609 – Richard and Henry Gribbine – Inishowen, Donegal

1614 – Neale O’Gribben – Moyacole, Derry

1615 – Brian O’Gribben – Edenduffcarrick, Antrim

BEFORE THIS, AS FAR AS I CAN TELL, THE NAME GRIBBIN IS NOT TO BE FOUND IN DOCUMENTATION.

All the above spellings of the name are as they are found in the original documentation and reflect the fluidity of English orthography at the time as well as the early efforts of English speakers to find English equivalents for Gaelic names which must have been quite bewildering.

I treat all these Gribbins in Chapter 13 of my book, (The Earliest Records). I examine the small bits of information we have about them to squeeze out any inferences which might flesh them out in any way. I also try to give a sense of the events they were living through, as well as what their day-to-day life would have looked like. In this blog I will try to boil all this down into an account of the most interesting insights.

OWIN AND HENRY

Owin and Henry O Gribin appear on a pardon list for the O’Dohertys of Inishowen in 1602, so they must have been affiliated in some way to the O’Doherty family and they must have lived in Inishowen or thereabouts. The reason for the issuing of a pardon list is that the O’Dohertys had recently (February 1601) switched sides in the Nine Years War and were now fighting for the forces of Queen Elizabeth against the O’Neills, the O’Donnells and the other rebels who were defeated at Kinsale later that year. Owin and Henry O Gribin, we can therefore assume, were soldiers (at least part-time) who had most likely been fighting alongside the rebels since 1594 and then assisted government forces in putting an end to the rebellion.

What else can we tell about Owin and Henry from this scrap of information? Well, we must assume that they were men of substance. Gaelic Irish society was highly hierarchical and the pardon list reflects this; at the beginning we find Sir Cahir O’Doherty and his closest family members, followed by the “Daveyd” clan, who were fosterers, advisers and emissaries of the O’Dohertys, followed by 146 other followers. Among these latter we find Owin and Henry. However, although they were evidently not high up in the pecking order, the very fact that they were named on the pardon list tells us that they had status within the O’Doherty world.

We can assume then that Owin and Henry most likely had possession of a good-sized piece of land which they managed when they were not called to arms. Or perhaps they were fishermen? The Eastern border of Inishowen Peninsula is formed by the shores of Lough Foyle, one of the most bountiful salmon fishing grounds in Ireland at that time. Indeed, further along the Foyle River, as it borders County Tyrone, there was a salmon-fishery called “Gribben” (!!! This is dealt with in Chapter 15 of the book).

RICHARD AND HENRY GRIBBINE

The O’Doherty sept served the English crown very loyally for a number of years, but when Sir Cahir O’Doherty was insulted by the Governor of Derry in 1608 he rebelled, although his rebellion was soon quashed. It’s likely that the Gribbins were involved in the rebellion in one way or another and would have tacitly been outlawed. However, as often happened in such circumstances, once the authorities had punished the ringleaders, they pardoned the rest, which included Richard and Henry “Gribbine”, for their names appear on a second pardon list dated 1609. The spelling is an early example of Gaelic families dropping the Mac or the O from their names to make them look more English. So, Richard and Henry (the latter may very well be the same Henry named in the 1602 pardon) presumably attempted to pick up their lives where they had left off and continue making a living as farmers, fishermen or whatever, or in managing their own followers. However, the subsequent history of Ulster shows that it was not plain sailing for Gaelic lords.

Having received the submission of Hugh O’Neill, leader of the rebels, the English government set up a whole new societal structure which was quite alien to the Gaelic mindset. New laws were put in place regulating land ownership, huge plots of land were reallocated, tithes were to be paid to the established church by Catholics and others, fines were imposed on those who did not attend church. On top of this, there were a number of men who had fought for the crown who were determined, by hook or by crook, to profit from the chaos left after the rebellion. Many Gaelic landowners, if they managed to hold on to their lands, were soon in debt because they had no idea how the new system worked. Men who had been relatively high up in the Gaelic hierarchy found themselves beggared and landless. Some became outlaws, living in the great forests, while others moved away. This may well be the reason that, in the centuries following, there were so few Gribbins living in Donegal.

NEALE O’GRIBBEN OF MOYACOLE

One such Gael who was presumably outraged at his world being turned upside down was surely Neale O’Gribben of Moyacole. In October 1614, this man joined a group of others to “wage war” against the new British settlers, led by “Donell Oge McDonnel Boy O’Neale”, in what was now the new county of Londonderry. Moyacole is very likely Moyagall, a townland only five miles east of Maghera, where Donell Oge lived. We do not know what happened to the rebel leader, but the chances are he was killed in the fighting. There is a list of the ring leaders who were captured and arraigned (this is in the records which survived of assizes that took place in the early part of the 17th century) and the record states that the three most important leaders were hung, drawn and quartered. What happened to Neale I do not know. Perhaps he was forced to do time in prison, perhaps he was deported, or perhaps he was released eventually and returned to Moyagall.
Certainly, Gribbins survived in the Moyagall area for centuries afterwards and perhaps they were descendants of Neale’s. Indeed, the vast majority of Derry Gribbins lived, and still live, in this southern part of the county. What can we say about Neale O’Gribben? The record describes him as a “yeoman”, which is a term denoting someone of middling status in the British social hierarchy – in Irish terms he was probably what was called a “freeman”, so someone not of high status, but not of the lowest class either (these would have been agricultural labourers and cottiers); someone with enough property to sustain his own family, someone the Irish would have referred to as a “freeman” and the English would have called a “yeoman”. I imagine him as a young man, someone who, along with a group of friends, became frustrated with the difficulties of life under English rule and decided, rashly as it turned out, to take the law into their own hands.

 

BRIAN O’GRIBBEN OF EDENDUFFCARRICK

Our final “early Gribbin” also comes to us courtesy of those early 17th century assize records. The assize which sat in Carrickfergus in March 1615 found that:

Brian O’Gribben, of Edenduffcarricke, yeoman, on the 27th of Nov. 1614, there committed an assault upon Elise ny Lagan, the widow of William Toole, a faithful subject, and with ‘a cudgill’ worth one halfpenny which he had in his right hand he struck her in the front of the head, giving her a mortal wound of 4 inches in length and one inch deep, of which she languished until the last day of the same month, when she died. Guilty. Says he is a Clerk. He is therefore, as is shewn in a former case, branded in the left hand and delivered to the Ordinary.

So, unfortunately, Brian is not revealed in a very positive light. This summary of the case evokes an image of someone brutal and brutish and brandishing a cudgel. Was he an unfeeling ogre who had no qualms about attacking a woman, or was he engaged in an act of war and Elise ny Lagan was a war casualty? It would seem that during the later months of 1614 there was widespread general rebelliousness in Ulster; note that Neale O’Gribben’s action in Maghera was only a month prior to Brian’s. Does the fact that Brian may have been part of a local uprising excuse his attack on a woman? Probably not.

What is striking is that, although we find in the assize records that men and women were condemned to death for stealing, Brian gets off relatively light. He is a “Clerk” and is consequently branded and handed over to the “Ordinary”. What does this mean? From medieval times it was accepted practice for clerics who had committed a felony to be handed over to the local church officers (the Ordinary) for punishment. With time, this practice was extended to anyone who could prove they could read and write; it was a legal loophole termed “benefit of clergy”. So, it looks as if Brian was an educated man (or perhaps he was, indeed, a cleric?) and used this fact to escape more severe punishment. Who knows how the church punished Brian, possibly with a fine (which in fact would have been more in line with Gaelic legal practice).

We should also take notice of where Brian hails from. Edenduffcarrick is the old name for Shane’s Castle, Antrim seat of the Clandeboye O’Neills. If Brian was a clerk of some kind, did he work for the O’Neills? And did the O’Neills perhaps vouch for him and exert influence so that he could be returned to work for them?