Nick Maxwell In 1771 a ‘Signor Pastorini’ (actually the English bishop Charles Walmesley) asked: ‘How long, O Lord, do you defer judging our cause, you who are holy and must detest the cruelties exercised upon us; you, who are true and have told us, you will revenge the injuries done to your servants?’ He also declared that … Read more
The past twenty years or so have witnessed an upsurge in the academic study of Tudor Ireland. A number of young scholars were inspired by a series of important essays dealing with the Irish reformation by Brendan Bradshaw, Nicholas Canny and Karl Bottigheimer in the 1970s and 1980s and influenced by diocesan studies undertaken by … Read more
The ‘Captain Rock’ campaign of 1821–4 is one in a series of outbreaks of agrarian unrest that began in the 1760s and continued until the eve of the Famine, when starvation finally made concerted action impossible and the landlords closed in to make the evictions and clearances they had long desired. The Rock years were … Read more
In 1949 the North held its first official women’s championships and hired Franz Stampfl to promote athletics in the province. Stampfl would later coach Roger Bannister to the world’s first sub-four-minute mile, and in the North he helped to produce three outstanding Olympians. Thelma Hopkins broke the world high jump record in May 1956 and … Read more
BROWNE, George (1698–1792), soldier of fortune, Russian army officer, governor of Livonia and count of the Holy Roman Empire, was born on 15 June 1698 at Moyne (Castle Mahan), Co. Limerick, son of George Browne of Camas (an uncle of the Austrian marshal Maximilian Ulysses von Browne) and his wife Honora de Lacy. Educated in … Read more