Documents from the Thomond Papers at Petworth House Archive1 ...

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family of Creagh. 66 Based around Kilfinaghta parish the Fannings prospered
on the back of an emerging, but still nascent, market economy of the early
decades of the seventeenth century. Constituting a new class of prosperous
tenants on the estates of the earl of Thomond, these families were poised
to take advantage of financial distress of smaller Gaelic freeholders slow
to adapt to the changed conditions and ostensibly altered landholding
matrix 67
In 1638 Henry O’Brien, fifth earl of Thomond, complained against
Simon Fanning and petitioned to prevent his sons George and John
Fanning selling aquavit in Co. Clare. In the lifetime of Donough O’Brien,
fourth earl of Thomond, Simon Fanning procured a grant by letters patent
for the license of wine and aquavit in Co. Clare which he sold in Ennis,
Clare, Bunratty and Sixmilebridge. Simon Fanning’s sons held an interest
in the licence but part of Simon’s interest in the license was conveyed to
the earl whose interest apparently descended to his heir Henry O’Brien.
After the earl died in 1624 Simon Fanning intended to ‘defeat the supplicant
[Henry O’Brien] of the benefit of that grant…in his Majesty’s Court
of Exchequer’. Henry O’Brien was claiming that the license lawfully
descended to him, by virtue of his father’s interest. Records of small scale
production of aquavit date from the mid-fifteenth century, one of which is
listed amongst a mortgage of lands of David O’Ferala in 1458. 68
The Fanning petition is valuable beyond exposing the earl of Thomond’s
dealings with freeholders and Limerick merchants. The petition contains
rare information on the presence of light industrial activity and the marketing
of goods in early seventeenth-century Co. Clare. 69 It also touches on
those elements of the market economy generally mentioned by historians
only in passing: the role of territorial magnates in promoting, and controlling,
systems of market exchange and the ever-increasing export trade of
commercialised agriculture and small scale local production in a regional
66 See Rev. Patrick Woulfe, Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall: Irish Names and Surnames, [Genealogical
Publishing Company re-print] (Baltimore,1969), pp 224–25, 236–7, 239, 285–286.
67 Patrick Nugent, The Gaelic clans of Co. Clare and their territories 1100–1700 A.D, (Dublin,
2007), p. 201. Evidence on the scope of land transactions between the Old English merchant
class and Gaelic freeholders and also between New-English and Dutch settlers and native
landowners can be profitably gleaned from James Frost’s abstracts of Co. Clare inquisitions.
See James Frost, A History and Topography of the County of Clare, pp 267–337.
68 James Hardiman (ed.), ‘Ancient Irish Deeds and Writings Chiefly relating to Landed Property
from the Twelfth to Seventeenth Century: With Translation, Notes and a Preliminary Essay’,
pp 50–51.
69 The production of aquavit is not mentioned in the accounts of the Corporation of Ennis
for the early seventeenth century after the town was granted a weekly market in 1609 and
received incorporation by royal charter in 1613. The 1642 Protestant Depositions can be used
as a proxy for identifying industrial activity. The deposition of Dutchman James Vandelure
of Sixmilebridge cites two water mills, a mill for bark, a malt house and a tan yard. Brian
Ó Dálaigh, (ed.), Corporation Book of Ennis, p. 15; TCD, Deposition of James Vanderlure Ms
829, ff 061r-062v, [24 August 1642].
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