The previous chapter summarizing the contents of Sir John Davies' Reports introduced the role of judicial resolutions in consolidating the Tudor conquest of Ireland. The single most important example of the use of such resolutions was their application against the customary patterns of Gaelic succession and land tenure known as tanistry and gavelkind. The need for judicial action to void native forms of landholding and descent became clear to Davies when he analysed the barriers to English sovereignty in Ireland raised by the manner in which land was used and owned in the Gaelic districts. Like other administrators concerned with the legal status of the Gaelic polity, Davies saw the extension of common law tenures to the formerly autonomous Gaelic lordships as the most important pre-condition of the exercise of English sovereignty in Ireland. The decision to employ extra-judicial resolutions, or legal decisions divorced from litigation pending in the central courts, involved the Irish judiciary in the formulation of a policy that aimed at assimilating an alien scheme of law and land tenure into the new state system.

Davies' reflections on the problems posed for English rule by the existence of the autonomous Gaelic lordships are revealed in the Reports and the Brief Discovery. Davies concurred with Bodin's civil law maxim that ‘a king is not sovereign where others give law without reference to him’.

The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in Ireland constitute one of the great watersheds in Irish history, a decisive period that witnessed the reduction of the whole island to effective English sovereignty. This conquest was not, however, the result of a consistent expansionist policy until the reign of Elizabeth, when an aggressive Dublin administration led by Sir Henry Sydney (1569–76) succeeded in establishing a militant programme that eventually tied successive administrations to extending English influence by forcible means into areas hitherto beyond the reach of crown government. Yet it was not until the end of Elizabeth's reign that the final contest for Irish sovereignty was fought. From 1594 until 1603, Hugh O'Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, led the last great Gaelic rebellion that shook the very foundations of English rule in Ireland and compelled the English government to commit financial resources that far exceeded the cost of military subvention in any of Elizabeth's continental wars.

The crushing success of English arms over rebel forces aided by Spain at the battle of Kinsale ultimately compelled O'Neill's unconditional submission to the Lord Deputy Mountjoy at Mellifont in county Louth on 30 March 1603 – six days after the death of Elizabeth. This military victory represented a necessary and primary phase in English domination over Ireland, but the second stage of political consolidation by judicial means was equally essential for England's lasting supremacy over the island.

Traditional accounts of events in the Munster towns during the spring of 1603 have understandably drawn attention to the obvious religious and jurisdictional undercurrents involved in the civil disturbances in these major corporations. Davies' Reports, however, point to equally significant economic aspects of this unrest brought about by government insolvency that precipitated attempts to tamper with the coinage. With disastrous results, the government sought to finance the cost of Tyrone's rebellion by debasing the Irish coin in 1601 from 9 oz. fine to 3 oz. fine of silver. Failure to withdraw the old sterling money from circulation, combined with the government's inability to gain acceptance of the base coin at face rather than intrinsic value, rapidly inflated the price of grain and other foodstuffs. Increased prices were further aggravated by the refusal of merchants to accept the base coin in commercial transactions, which led to disruption of the vital subsistence links connecting England with the port towns. The unrest launched by the appearance of the base coin was the subject of frequent complaint, and the role of the bogus shilling in feeding the fires of anarchy in the corporations has not received the study it deserves.

This oversight is particularly striking when balanced against remarks by contemporaries. The comments by Lord Deputy Mountjoy and Solicitor-General Davies clearly registered the difficulties caused by the new coin.

The innovative use of judicial resolutions by Sir John Davies and the judiciary effected a sweeping alteration in the relationship between English conquerors and the native elements in Ireland. As the Reports demonstrate, however, judge-made law also became a tool against the Old English colonial community, the descendants of those who had settled in Ireland before the sixteenth century. This assault against a group which had been instrumental in securing the Tudor conquest may seem illogical, yet it was not without provocation.

Immediately after the death of Elizabeth in early April 1603, the southern towns in Ireland went on the rampage, expelling Protestants, reconsecrating Catholic churches, and defying central authority. Inspired partly by reports that James I intended to grant religious toleration to the island, the citizens of Waterford, Cork, Limerick, Kilkenny, Drogheda, Wexford, Clonmel and Cashel took the occasion to assert their solidarity against Protestant officials. In Waterford the corporation closed the city gates to Lord Deputy Mountjoy and his army of 5,000 men who had marched south from Dublin to restore order. In justification for this defiant behaviour, the unruly townsmen claimed the authority of a four-century old charter granted by King John. With Mountjoy waiting on the outskirts of the city, the corporation dispatched an ecclesiastical emissary, Father James White, Vicar-Apostolic of Waterford and Lismore, to negotiate. Leading a solemn procession from the city gates, White engaged the Lord Deputy in a theological debate over the right of Catholic subjects to take up arms against their sovereign.

In 1603, John Davies travelled to Dublin to assume his duties as Solicitor-General for Ireland. His appointment followed the defeat of Tyrone's rebel forces and the final subjugation of the long-recalcitrant kingdom. As one of the principal advocates of English policy during the next sixteen years Davies worked to consolidate and perpetuate this military conquest by a series of judicial decisions which transformed the legal and administrative structure of the island. In 1615 the Attorney-General presented a number of these judgements in his publication of the Irish Law Reports. In format these Reports reflect the early modern reporting system at its most mature level. Like the reports of Plowden, Dyer and Coke, Davies' work departs from the yearbook tradition, giving full introduction to pleadings that focus on demurrers or special verdicts. Apart from several cases decided by resolution of the Irish justices, Davies' care in framing full case headings also allows the reader to identify easily the precise tribunal adjudicating each case. The Reports which were derived mainly from Davies' own work in the Dublin courts understandably emphasize the pleadings of the Attorney-General or Solicitor-General. But either in his capacity as king's advocate, or in acting as private counsel before the Dublin courts, Davies was meticulous in divorcing his own opinions from those of other counsel and the court.

As a figure in late Elizabethan literary society, Sir John Davies' main attraction for scholars rests on his reputation as a poet and man of letters, rather than his career as a major legal official in Ireland during the Jacobean period. This emphasis on Davies' literary reputation owes its origin to Alexander Grosart's edition of Davies' prose and poetry which appeared in 1869. Accordingly, Davies' upward mobility in Jacobean society has been ascribed not to an Irish career, but to larger poetic works written at the end of the sixteenth century – Orchestra, Hymns to Astrea and Nosce Teipsum. While poetry doubtless played a role in gaining access to influential circles at court, Davies' little-studied professional career in Ireland (Solicitor-General, 1603–6; Attorney-General, 1606–19) must also be recognized as a significant chapter in a life that elevated the third son of a Wiltshire tanner to an appointment as Chief Justice of the King's Bench in England.

Davies was born in Tisbury, Wiltshire, and was christened in the parish church on 16 April 1569. His Welsh father, Edward Davies, had emigrated to England in the company of Sir William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, during the reign of Edward VI. The father later married Mary Bennet of Pitthouse, a small village located only a mile from Tisbury where he pursued, until his death in 1580, a successful career as a tanner.

This book had its genesis ten years ago at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee where Professors John McGovern and James Brundage encouraged an interest in legal history and economic development that was subsequently extended to early modern Irish history. For their encouragement and advice I can only begin to make grateful acknowledgement.

It remains to enumerate my many other debts. This study owes much to friendly criticism volunteered by the seventeenth-century seminar at the Institute of Historical Research in London and by Professor G. R. Elton's Tudor seminar at Cambridge. For fair mindedness, wise counsel and warm encouragement it is necessary to make special thanks to Professor Elton whose uncommonly effective scholarly assistance is an experience shared by those who know both the man and the mind. Dr Paul Brand of University College, Dublin, and Mr Kenneth Nicholls, of University College, Cork, generously read and commented on an earlier draft of this work. I am also grateful for helpful criticism obtained from my former colleague Dr Mary O'Dowd of the Queen's University of Belfast and from Professor Nial Osborough of the Law Department at Trinity College, Dublin. Many others offered help, advice and encouragement, and I can only name a few. Much support was tendered by Dr Ian Roy of King's College, London, and by Professor David Harkness of the Queen's University of Belfast.

The English government's attempt to secure religious conformity among leading officials in the Pale and the port towns of Munster proved to be only one phase in its assault on the Old English community in Ireland. During the same period, Davies and the central authorities waged a systematic campaign against the cherished liberties and privileges that had allowed the port municipalities to operate independently of royal control. This jurisdictional autonomy was to be tested in Waterford's refusal to admit the Lord Deputy to the town, on the authority of a charter granted to King John.

The most valued of the municipal privileges involved the granting of a right to customs revenues, and the appointment of customs officials, normally reserved to the crown. The size of the economic stakes at issue was considerable. It is understandable, then, that the government's attempt to eliminate corporate privilege also owed something to the designs of Robert Cecil and a clique of London-based entrepreneurs who proved more than willing to manipulate state policy in furtherance of their own commercial interests.

To appreciate these jurisdictional and commercial currents, it is necessary to discuss several aspects of municipal liberties. First, the towns had played a determining role in the successful outcome achieved by the aggressive Elizabethan policy of conquest and colonization in Ireland. Second, corporate liberties and franchises had long operated independently of government control.

The chapters dealing with the case of the Bann fishery and the case of mixed money have demonstrated how Sir John Davies, as Irish Attorney-General, supported both private and public interests in Irish litigation through argument from Roman law. In these and other cases in the Reports, Davies' use of continental law was so extensive as to cast doubt upon the conventional notions of an insular common law mentality put forward by Professor J. G. A. Pocock. In his well-known study, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, Pocock asserted:

This assumption that English lawyers practised their trade in a professional climate devoid of all practical contact with European law, is, however, extremely narrow and fails to take into consideration the extent to which common lawyers were exposed to the civil law tradition in the seventeenth century. The major points of contact with foreign legal sources were: the law practised in the numerous non-common law jurisdictions; the legal training at the universities and Inns of Court; the early Stuart political controversies concerning public law; and finally the movement for law reform that began at the end of the sixteenth century. All these influences gave common lawyers considerable exposure to the principles and procedures of the civil law, and as Davies' work in Ireland demonstrates, this familiarity often had concrete effects in the decisions rendered by common law judges in litigation pending before the central courts.