Merchants and Mariners in Sixteenth Century Meath

Wednesday 17 October 2012, 8pm
Dr Fionnán Tuite, will deliver a lecture entitled “Merchants and Mariners in Sixteenth Century Meath”

Fionnán Tuite

Meath, which included part of Drogheda, constituted the largest and wealthiest area of the Pale. This lecture will present new research from three aspects of its social and economic life in the sixteenth century. It will begin by discussing Drogheda’s powerful mercantile community and how its economic conflict with the crown undermined its important port and radicalised elements in the town. A network of newly-arrived, rurally-based English administrators who, from the 1530s, became heavily involved in the county’s commerce is then identified and their fortunes examined. The final section will offer new research on how this mercantile community operated abroad. It will discuss the working conditions, ages and connections of sailors, as well as their experiences of piracy on journeys as far away as Malaga. It will trace mercantile networks and centres of industry by examining port books to see what was being exported from, and imported into, the county. The owners, and types, of
ships and the credit arrangements made by these merchants or their agents in foreign ports are also examined,

as is the involvement of Drogheda mariners in political
activity in the closing decades of the century