Derry Corporation Minute Book Volume 1 (1673-1688)

Introduction

This is the earliest volume of Derry Corporation minutes which covers the period from 3rd February 1673 to 30th July 1686.

Note that the old style Julian Calendar - which uses the 25th March as the first day of each year - is used in the minute books up until the first day of 1752, when the new style Gregorian Calendar, which commences on the 1st January, was adopted by the British Empire.

Few seventeenth century records relating to Derry have survived.  The first minute book in this collection records the development of the city following the Ulster Plantation and the sieges of 1649 and 1689.  References reveal the concerns of the Corporation for the safe keeping of the City.  

The first meeting recorded in the volume details an order which was made for the payment of 20 shillings, quarterly, to Edward Cooper for keeping the locks and keys of the City Gates in order.

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Highlights from Volume 1

In April 1675 the Corporation wrote to the Irish Society in London asking them to grant the Corporation, in fee farm, ground on each side of the ferry gatehouse to enable the construction of a ‘common gaol’.

Another matter which concerned the Corporation at this time was the non-return of some of the City’s cannon which had been sent to Galway and Sligo by Sir Charles Coote, Commander in Chief of Parliamentary forces garrisoned in Derry during the siege of 1649.  On 3 April 1675 the Corporation instructed Alderman Norman to communicate with the Irish Society “about bringing back the gunnes which belong to the city,” and what “Alderman Norman shall find needful to expend in applying himself to the Society on this important attempt shall be reimbursed him out of the chamber”.

Five years later in May 1682, it was reported that one of Londonderry Corporation’s brass demy cannon “sent from the garrison by Sir Charles Coote when Commander in Chief of the Parliamentary forces in Ulster to some other parts of the Kingdom” was now in Kinsale having been “carried thither from Galway” and a further two were “now at Sligo”.  

In November 1683, the Governor of the Fort of Culmore was ordered to cease stopping “Merchants Shipps and other vessels at the said Fort” and demanding wine and other goods from them “for the payment of prerequisites” such as anchorage, a fee charged for the privilege of anchoring a ship, as it was a “great discouragement of trade”.