Nick Maxwell ‘The Four Masters’—what does that name bring to mind? A GAA club from Donegal, perhaps, but more likely the compilers of the seventeenth-century Gaelic history of Ireland. I’ve often felt that the somewhat eulogistic title of that band of authors in itself ensured for them a place in the canon of Gaelic literature, evoking, as … Read more
Once a man was consecrated a bishop of the Anglican church, he had a seat in the House of Lords. Bishops were especially loyal to Dublin Castle because, as Jeremiah Falvey has shown in his ground-breaking study of the eighteenth-century episcopate, 40 of them owed their elevation to the fact that they had been chaplains … Read more
After the partial repeal of Poynings’ Law in 1782, the Irish House of Lords became a much more important body than before. The Lords represented the great landowners and the Anglican Church; therefore, from 1782 to 1800, it required the best efforts of government in its management, thus demonstrating its true political significance. Support of … Read more
Michael O’Clery led a team who compiled the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland (more commonly known as the Annals of the Four Masters), a comprehensive history of Ireland. The team included his cousin Cucogry O’Clery, Fearfasa O’Mulconry and Cucogry O’Dugan (historians), his older brother Conary and Morris O’Mulconry (both copyists). They made two handwritten … Read more
Louis O’Clery’s Life of Red Hugh O’Donnell was generally unknown until Revd Denis Murphy’s 1895 English translation. Its style combined history, praise and reverence. He probably wrote the biography after 1616, perhaps as late as 1627. Louis, chief of his sept, lost his family’s Kilbarron patrimony in the Ulster Plantation. The English granted him 960 … Read more