Oliver Cromwell’s government sponsored two congregations of Protestant Dissenters in Dublin between 1649 and 1660. One of them met at Wood Street and the other at ‘Saint Nicholas-within-the-walls’, close to Christ Church Cathedral. Both of these communities flourished from the mid-seventeenth century until well into the nineteenth. For more than 140 years the ministers at … Read more
Before A history of the Irish working class, Hell or Connaught! The Cromwellian colonisation of Ireland (1975) and The Boyne Water (1976), Peter Berresford Ellis had published books on the histories of Wales and Scotland. In more recent years his historical work has focused on the ancient Celtic peoples—ancestors of the Irish, Welsh, Cornish, Manx, … Read more
Our understanding of the Cromwellian period from 1649 to 1660 has been sorely hampered by the fact that the records of the period were lost in the destruction of the Four Courts in 1922. The fact that the documentary evidence for this most controversial of historical periods is almost non-existent has meant that apocryphal stories, … Read more
Padraig Lenihan (Cork University Press, e57.25) ISBN 1859182445 The study of Confederate Ireland has experienced a renaissance of late, after years of relative neglect. However, scholars have concentrated for the most part on the social and political developments of the period, highlighting the importance of factionalism in undermining the confederate war effort. Padraig Lenihan’s Confederate … Read more
The University of Strathclyde hosted the second conference of theResearch Centre in Scottish History on 5 April 1995. The organiser,John Young, brought together a new generation of historians engaged inoriginal research to explore the ‘Celtic Dimensions of the BritishCivil Wars’. Although the ‘British problem’ has been the focus of muchdebate in recent years, and engaged … Read more