The 1641 Depositions: A Source for Social and Cultural History

by Nicholas Canny It is a commonplace that the merit of any piece of historical investigation can be judged by the sources employed and by the questions asked by the historians of those sources. One of my silent criticisms of the work of the earlier generation of historians who had studied early modern Ireland was … Read more

Belfast at its Zenith

At noon on Saturday 13 October 1888 a locomotive decked with flags steamed into Belfast’s Great Victoria Street terminus. As a hundred men of the Gordon Highlanders presented arms and the band of the Black Watch played ‘God Save the Queen,’ Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, sixth Marquess of Londonderry and lord lieutenant of Ireland, stepped out of … Read more

Women of The Nation by Brigitte Anton

The names of the leaders are familiar: Thomas Davis, Charles Gavan Duffy, John Blake Dillon, William Smith O’Brien, James Fintan Lalor and John Mitchel. However, amongst a wider circle of mainly young people who contributed to The Nation, who distributed it, who went to Repeal meetings or who joined the various societies promoting Irish culture … Read more

Lord Clare and his Historical Reputation by Ann C. Kavanaugh

Few men in the eighteenth-century political world rose more rapidly or spectacularly than John Fitzgibbon. The son of a wealthy convert lawyer, he was barely thirty when he entered Parliament in 1778. Within five years he was appointed Attorney General. In 1789 he attained the highest legal office in Ireland, Lord Chancellor. He advanced equally … Read more