Barony (Ireland)

In Ireland, a barony (Irish: barúntacht, plural barúntachtaí) is a historical subdivision of a county, analogous to the hundreds into which the counties of England were divided. Baronies were created during the Tudor reconquest of Ireland, replacing the earlier cantreds formed after the original Norman invasion. Some early baronies were later subdivided into half baronies with the same standing as full baronies.

Baronies were mainly cadastral rather than administrative units. They acquired modest local taxation and spending functions in the nineteenth century before being superseded by the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898. Subsequent adjustments of county boundaries mean that some baronies now straddle two counties.

The island of Ireland was "shired" into counties in two distinct periods: the east and south during the Anglo-Norman period (from the 1169 invasion to the early fourteenth century) and the rest in the Tudor conquest of the sixteenth century. "Barony" was used in three overlapping but distinct senses in the early period:

Over the centuries, these senses diverged, and many administrative baronies have never been associated with feudal or noble titles. Spurious "barony" titles have been sold by using the names of administrative baronies for which there is no corresponding hereditary or prescriptive barony. In counties Louth and Meath, the administrative subdivisions were called "baronies" from the beginning, originally as portions given by Hugh de Lacy, Lord of Meath to his vassals. Further south the name "cantred" was used till the fifteenth century. The cantreds declined with the rest of the English colony as its influence retreated to the Pale in the fourteenth century, and when the Tudors and Stuarts revived and extended county government, the baronies which they delimited often bore little relation to the earlier cantreds.

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