At a meeting held in Dublin on 15 February 1698, the superiors of the Franciscan Order agreed to adhere to the act of banishment issued a few months earlier, ordering Catholic religious orders out of the country. The third point on the agenda was the question of material goods belonging to the friars. It was … Read more
Students of the early modern period may be presented with a relatively straightforward history of Ireland’s sovereignty: the rapid military domination of a politically fragmented Gaelic polity by subjects of the king of England—beginning two decades or so after the pope’s grant of the island, by right of the so-called Donation of Constantine, to King … Read more
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
Memoirs of Captain Rock Thomas Moore (edited and introduced by Emer Nolan, with annotations by Seamus Deane) (Field Day, €25.) ISBN 9781844881437 Bard of Erin: the life of Thomas Moore Ronan Kelly (Penguin Ireland, €32.) ISBN 978946755363 Famous as the writer of melancholic ‘Irish melodies’ such as ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ and ‘The Meeting … Read more
The post-medieval archaeology of Ireland, 1550–1850 Audrey Horning, Ruairí Ó Baoill, Colm Donnelly and Paul Logue (eds) (Wordwell, for the Irish Post-Medieval Archaeology Group, €70) ISBN 9781905569137 This welcome collection serves several purposes and prompts even more questions. First, it surveys comprehensively what post-medieval archaeologists have achieved, mainly during the last 30 years. It also … Read more