Nick Maxwell Walter Devereux, first earl of Essex, and the failure of plantation in Elizabethan Ulster, c. 1573–6. By David Heffernan Walter Devereux, first earl of Essex, was a paradoxical figure. When he died in Dublin on 22 September 1576 at the age of just 37 he was surrounded by some of the leading political figures of … Read more
On the challenges of writing (yet another) biography of ‘the Chief’. By David McCullagh In 2010, shortly after the publication of my biography of John A. Costello, I was asked by an interviewer about my choice of subject. I airily replied that, while little had been written about Costello, ‘the last thing the world needs … Read more
Essex’s son is much better-known than his father. Robert joined the Elizabethan court in the mid-1580s and quickly cemented his position as a favourite of Queen Elizabeth’s. Following the death of his stepfather, Robert Dudley, first earl of Leicester, in 1588 Essex gradually ascended to become the leader of England’s war effort in the First … Read more
Though it ultimately ended in total failure, Essex’s ‘Enterprise’ nevertheless played an important part in the development of Tudor colonisation in Ireland. When the first major plantation was undertaken by the Tudors in Laois and Offaly in the 1550s it was organised by the government, but it proved a stop-start affair that did not prosper … Read more
By Siobhán Ryan In 1813 the Sligo Grand Jury appointed three commissioners to supervise the provision of a new county gaol. A site comprising almost seven acres in Abbeyquarter North, on the eastern fringes of Sligo town, was selected for a complex intended to hold up to 160 inmates. The estimated cost of the gaol … Read more