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One of the most unusual manuscripts emanating from Gaelic Ireland in the
16th century is the work now known as the Seanchas Burcach or the ‘Historia
et genealogia familiae de Burgo’ [History and Genealogy of the Burke
family].1 It is written on vellum, measuring approximately 24 x 15cm,
partly in Irish and partly in Latin. Uniquely for an Irish manuscript
of this period it contains a series of 14 full-page colour illustrations
in addition to texts in prose and verse. The manuscript is now in Trinity
College Dublin, having been acquired in 1741 as part of the Stearne-Madden
bequest.
The Seanchas Burcach is clearly a high status manuscript. It opens with
an account in Irish of the rights and properties of the Mac William Burkes
of Mayo, followed by a somewhat exaggerated account of their lineage and
international connections, including their claim to a shared ancestry
with the then monarch, Queen Elizabeth I. The second section is the work
of a different scribe who added material in Latin, again of a genealogical
and historical nature, designed to present the history of the MacWilliam
Burkes to a wider audience than those who spoke only Irish. The fourteen
illustrations contained in the volume are gathered together on eight leaves
in the middle of the volume, preceded and followed by blank leaves. Following
the illustrations, the first scribe resumed his work by transcribing two
lengthy praise poems on the MacWilliam Burkes. Finally, at the very end
of the volume, after a gap of over forty blank leaves, there are two legal
records dating from 1584, incidental to the work as originally planned.2
The blank leaves indicate that the manuscript was never finished, probably
owing to the death of its patron.
The Seanchas Burcach is not formally dated but there is sufficient internal
evidence to allow a fairly precise dating, and so determine its patron.
A reference to Sir Nicholas Malby as Connacht President means it must
be later than July 1576. The date 1578 is mentioned as being the current
year in the context of a discussion of the ancestry of Elizabeth I, and
although the relevant passage has been written over an erasure, the revision
is in the same hand as the surrounding text and was probably done soon
after the manuscript was written.3 Two documents at the end of the volume
are dated 1584, but given their position following numerous blank leaves,
they were probably added well after the main text was completed.
The detail of the illustrations also provides clues as to the date of
the work. Françoise Henry and Geneviève Marsh-Micheli have
observed that Richard Mór Burke (d.1243) (Fig 3) is depicted wearing
a large-brimmed, high-crowned felt hat of a type that came into fashion
in England in the 1570s and remained popular until the 1610s. In the next
picture in the series, William Burke (d.1270) is dressed in the style
of costume worn by Robert Dudley earl of Leicester in portraits of 1565
and 1575, with a small round cap, small white ruff, and skirt-like baggy
trousers.4 When taken together with the subject matter of the volume,
both text and illustrations, it becomes obvious that the manuscript was
compiled in the 1570s and that it was prepared for Sir John Burke, better
known as Seaán MacOliverus, who was lord of the MacWilliam Burkes
of Mayo from 1571 to his death in 1580.
In essence the manuscript was an affirmation of his lordship, and its
purpose was to publicise, preserve and enhance his status and power (Fig
1). One clear expression of that purpose is found in the second of the
lengthy bardic poems that are transcribed onto the vellum in a careful
hand with an attempt at ornamentation of a kind rare enough in late 16th-century
Gaelic manuscripts (Fig 2). The poem, Fearond Chloidhemh críoch
Bhanbha [The land of Banbha is but swordland] composed by Tadhg Dall Ó
hUiginn, argues strongly for the entitlement of those of Anglo-Norman
descent to their Irish property.
The poem addresses fundamental issues about the status and power of the
Gaelicised population of Anglo-Norman descent, acquiescing in the social
and political reality of 16th century Connacht where, after generations
of intermarriage, there was no longer any meaningful distinction between
those of Gaelic and Anglo-Norman descent. The poem recognised the right
of conquest as legitimate grounds for ownership of land. In doing so,
it provided the theoretical underpinning for the Mac William claims to
territorial overlordship asserted in the prose texts earlier in the manuscript.
As a political pragmatist, from the mid-1570s Sir Seaán MacOliverus
opted to cooperate with the English provincial administration in Connacht,
a strategy he perceived as the best means of sustaining his status and
influence in north Connacht. In 1576 Lord Deputy Sir Henry Sidney reported
that he was ‘the only man of power that hath showed himself loyal’.5
The Connacht President, Sir Nicholas Malby actively supported Sir Seaán
against his long-time rival within the lordship, his cousin and tánaiste
Ricard an Iarainn, husband of Granuaile.6 In 1579, Sir Seaán sent
his only legitimate son, William, to live at court in the household of
Sir Francis Walsingham. It was to further cultivate these court connections
that in June 1580 Sir Seaán was preparing to go to England to meet
the Queen in person.7 However, he died in November the same year, without
having made that journey. At the time of his death the contemporary Annals
of Loch Cé simply noted ‘MacWilliam Burke, i.e, John, the
son of Oliver, head of the nobility, honour and dignity of the province
of Connacht, died’.8 That it was not a very effusive obituary may
be due to the fact that the family of Brian MacDiarmada, the chief compiler
of those annals, had long endured an uneasy relationship with the MacWilliam
Burkes who sporadically attempted to enforce their overlordship over them
and their neighbours in eastern Connacht.9 More detailed and fulsome was
the obituary accorded Seaán in the Annals of the Four Masters written
in the 1630s. The annalists noted under the year 1580 ‘Mac William
Burke, Seaán son of Oliver son of Sean, a munificent and very affluent
man, who preferred peace to the most successful war, and who always aided
the sovereign, died’.10 More enigmatic is the caption above the drawing
of Seaán in the Seanchus Burcach which observed ‘This [is]
MacWilliam Burke, Seaán son of Oliver son of Richard O Chuairsge,
and to his own detriment he suffered greater hardship than any of his
ancestors, defending his own patrimony, i.e. he and his kindred fought
seven battles in his time before he secured sovereignty.’11 The caption
indicates clearly that the lordly status of Sir Seaán MacOliverus
was something that had to be defended on all fronts. In such circumstances
propaganda was an important weapon. The decision to commission a prestige
manuscript documenting the lands and ancestry of Sir Seaán MacOliverus
as head of the MacWilliam lordship is best understood in this context.
It is clear from the illustrations in the volume that the foundation of
Sir Seaán Mac Oliverus’ political and social status was determined
by his ancestry. His title to the MacWilliam lordship, and MacWilliam
claims to overlordship over others had been established by the actions
of these past heroes beginning with Richard Mór Burke (lord of
Connacht 1227-43). The caption to this picture made special mention of
the genealogical link with the English crown ‘and the daughter of
the English king is Richard Mór’s mother’. The striking
red background, the colour of royalty, was deliberately chosen. The same
royal pedigree is repeated in the caption accompanying the image of Richard’s
son William Óc (d.1270): ‘This is William, son of Richard
Mór Burke, son of the daughter of England’s king, from whom
descended Lower MacWilliam Burke’ (fol.19v). It was not sufficient
to establish the MacWilliam ancestry; it was also considered necessary
to enhance their status—and by implication the status of their 16th-century
descendants—by making specific reference to their genealogical relationship
to kings of England. The subsequent portraits systematically document
the succeeding six generations of the Lower MacWilliam Burkes: Sir William
Liath (d.1324) (fol.20r), Sir Edmund Albanach (d.1375) (Fig 5), Sir Thomas
Mac Emoind Albanach (d.1402) (Fig 6), Edmund na Féasóige
(d.1458) (fol.21v) Ricard Ó Cuairsge (d.1479) (Fig 4), and then
Seaán (fol.22v) grandfather of Seaán MacOliverus.12 At this
point there is a break in the sequence of portraits with the picture of
Seaán son of Ricard being followed by a mediocre attempt at painting
the MacWilliam coat of arms. Headed ‘Arms of Clan William’ it
is a more elaborate heraldic image than that found in the individual portraits
but not very successfully executed. The inclusion of a heraldic shield
in each of the nine MacWilliam portraits clearly indicates the value attached
to the status conveyed by heraldic symbols, but it is also evident that
the artist was not a skilled heraldic painter. Neither the patron’s
grandfather nor father had attained to the status of MacWilliam, and hence
it was all the more important for Sir Seaán MacOliverus to stress
the illustrious pedigree of earlier generations, and to clearly establish
his direct line of descent from those who had held power in the past.
Curiously, the painting of his own father was planned but not executed.
The page preceding the painting of Sir Seaán MacOliverus is blank
apart from the caption in the upper margin marking ‘The place for
Oliverus Burke’ (fol.23v). The final portrait, of Sir Seaán,
was of course the most important, presenting him as a man of war whose
pedigree required and entitled him to be such. The captions to this series
of Burke portraits in the manuscript are the work of three different scribes
and none can be assumed to be the work of the artist. Without those captions,
however, the genealogical and familial context of this unusual series
of paintings could never be known.
Immediately preceding the sequence of secular paintings in the manuscript
there is a series of four religious images. They depict episodes from
the Passion of Christ: Christ before Pilate; the Scourging at the Pillar;
the Crowning with thorns; and the Carrying of the Cross. In contrast to
the secular paintings, these are crowded scenes, but the stylistic similarities
are sufficient to be confident that they are the work of the same artist.
The third in the series is the most unusual one since it combines an Ecce
Homo scene with an image of the Five Wounds, an image which was the focus
of a widespread devotional cult in late medieval Europe, not least in
Ireland.
Although tentative comparisons have been suggested between some of the
secular images and knights depicted on some 16th-century tombstones, there
appears to be nothing distinctively Irish about these paintings. The identity
of the artist is unknown, and no secular examples of similar work from
the 16th century survive in Irish manuscripts. The closet surviving parallel
for Ireland is the collection of seventeen illustrations on the Waterford
Charter Roll (c.1373) produced two centuries earlier.13 Like the Waterford
Charter Roll, the Burke portraits may have been intended to impress an
English as well as an Irish audience (see Irish Arts Review, Spring 2004).
Though usually discussed as an example of what ‘might have been’
in the development of Irish painting, given the patron’s anxiety
to cultivate his contacts at the London court, the possibility that Sir
Seaán MacOliverus Burke brought in outside expertise cannot be
completely ruled out.
Bernadette Cunningham is deputy librarian of the Royal Irish Academy and
currently holds a research fellowship at the Mícheál Ó
Cléirigh Institute for the Study of Irish History and Civilization,
University College Dublin.
Photography of TCD MS 1440 is reproduced courtesy of The Board of Trinity
College Dublin.
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