Nick Maxwell Samuel Neilson was born on 17 September 1761 at Ballyroney, Co. Down, to Alexander Neilson, a Presbyterian minister, and his wife Agnes. He was the second-born of a large family of eight boys and five girls and was educated in liberal arts and mathematics. He married Anne Bryson in 1785 when he worked as a … Read more
On 12 August 1821 a corpulent George IV set foot on Ireland at Howth, the first peacetime visit by a British monarch. A medallion (below) proclaimed that ‘Ireland hails with joy the visit of her sovereign’. Commemorative medallions were produced for royal visits, suggesting that the Irish were loyal to the Crown but led astray … Read more
WOMEN WHO BROKE AWAY FROM THE RESTRAINTS OF CONVENTIONAL LIFESTYLE, THEIR SEX AND THEIR CLASS By Eugene Coyle In the early summer of 1778 two Anglo-Irish women, accompanied by their maidservant, fled from Kilkenny and arrived in north Wales. They were dressed as clergymen and their maidservant as a boy. Who were they, and why … Read more
Public attitudes towards lesbians or sapphites were ambiguous, as sex between women was not illegal, although sodomy or male homosexuality had been brutally supressed by law since the early fourteenth century. Classed as degrading, degenerate, bestial, immoral and unnatural, it was a serious criminal act for which men were hung, imprisoned, transported, whipped, branded and … Read more
WITH THE SEPTCENTENARY ANNIVERSARY OF THE BRUCE INVASION OF IRELAND THIS YEAR, PERHAPS IT IS RELEVANT TO ADDRESS A TOPIC OFTEN ASSOCIATED WITH THE INVASION: THE REMONSTRANCE OF THE IRISH PRINCES. By Stephen Hewer The Remonstrance was a petition sent to Pope John XXII in c. 1317 that contained a list of grievances by Domhnall … Read more