Nick Maxwell 
Through their wills, people rewarded friendships, ensured the financial stability of their children or spouses, or donated to the church for the sake of their souls. Ireland’s single surviving volume of medieval wills and testaments, the Register of wills and inventories of the Diocese of Dublin in the time of Archbishops Tregury and Walton, contains … Read more
There has always been indirect evidence in Dáil Éireann and trade union archives of republican infiltration, and recently released Military Service Pension applications show that a number of IRA and IRB activists were engaged in precisely this exercise. Some members of the group submitted identical statements with their applications that: ‘I was a member of … Read more
People gave to religious or charitable causes in the Middle Ages for a variety of reasons—sometimes because they were devout, but also to acquire the social status that went with visible donations. John Gogh died in late 1472, and in his will requested burial in Christ Church Cathedral. He donated a missal to the cathedral, … Read more
The law dictated who could make a will or testament and what form the document took. The practice of writing testaments arrived in Ireland with the Anglo-Normans. Testaments allowed people to dictate instructions for their funeral, appoint executors and dispose of their ‘moveable’ property—their possessions with the exception of land or houses, which were passed … Read more
The historic meeting took place in Tristledermod, modern-day Castledermot, Co. Kildare. As a grand-nephew of a member of the anti-Treaty IRA Four Courts garrison of 1922, rediscovering an original manuscript of a contemporaneous record that is the earliest known documentary evidence of an assembly of state officials to call itself a parliament in Ireland seems … Read more