Robert Emmet was arrested on 25 August 1803 by Dublin’s chief of police, Town Major Henry Charles Sirr. From the time of his appointment as assistant town major in 1796 until his retirement to the police magistrates’ bench in 1808, Sirr created an era of surveillance, pursuit, detection and arrest that is probably unparalleled since … Read more
Few have shown such lack of enthusiasm for appointment as a librarian as Thomas Russell! He was with Wolfe Tone in Dublin when he heard the news on 17 January 1794: ‘Find I am ele[c]ted to the librarianship at Belfast, which [Wolfe Tone] and [Whitley] Stokes have put me out of conceit of’. Russell’s radical … Read more
The rising of 1803 bore as much resemblance to what had been planned by its chief military strategist, Robert Emmet, as the rebellion of 1798 did to Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s original plans. In both instances United Irish offensive activities had been envisaged as secondary to those of a sizeable French expeditionary force. Contingencies devised by … Read more
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Dublin Castle’s ‘Personalities Files’ span the emergence of Sinn Féin, the Easter Rising and the War of Independence, with the largest number relating to the period 1917–20. As might be expected, the documents provide a rich source of information on leading figures such as Michael Collins and Eamon de … Read more
The December election of 1910, which gave John Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party the balance of power, and the subsequent passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, which removed the House of Lords veto, made the prospect of Home Rule a very real possibility for Ireland. Like the rest of southern Ireland, Kildare awaited the imminent … Read more