Galway’s Punished Jury
The dispute had begun in 1635, when Wentworth pressed the ancient royal claim to Connacht. By treating the medieval grant of the province to Lionel of Antwerp as a continuing title in the Crown, officials sought verdicts that would clear the way for a new plantation. Juries in Roscommon, Mayo and Sligo found for the king. County Galway did not. Its jurors rejected the Crown’s claim, in a county where the political weight of the Catholic Earl of Clanricarde and the interests of old landowning families made the proposed settlement particularly threatening.