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
Sir,—Fergus Whelan’s fascinating article on Cromwell and Irish republicanism (HI 18.6, Nov./Dec. 2010) brought to mind two interesting parallels between the Irish republicans of 1798 and the English republicans of a century and a half earlier. The Roundheads and Croppies both wore their hair short as a badge, and both Levellers and United Irishmen adopted … Read more
Sir,—Re Fergus Whelan’s claim that Irish republicanism is ‘not indigenous’ (HI 18.6, Nov./Dec. 2010). By the same token, Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism and Islam are all imports. In fact, the only truly indigenous faith is paganism.—Yours etc., JAMES G. KEEHAN Gort
In the seventeenth-century poem ‘Tuireamh na hÉireann’, the war in Ireland between 1641 and 1653 is described as ‘an cogadh do chríochnaigh Éire’ [the war that finished Ireland], and there is no disputing the importance of Cromwell’s impact on this conflict. He landed at Ringsend in August 1649, and during the subsequent nine-month campaign displayed … Read more