There have been attempts to publish the 1641 Depositions before, in the 1930s and 1960s, but these plans were abandoned thanks to the outbreaks of, respectively, World War II and the ‘Troubles’. After all, explains Professor Ohlmeyer, the Depositions were, and still are, extremely contentious. The fact that the testimonies were taken mainly from Protestant … Read more
Oliver Plunkett is unquestionably one of the best-known churchmen in Irish history. Of Old English stock from Meath, he left Ireland during the chaos of the 1640s to be educated in Rome, eventually returning to Ireland as archbishop of Armagh. An energetic and gifted (if contentious) reformer, he was arrested in December 1679 and executed … Read more
Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (Oxford University Press, £48) ISBN 0 19820891X The last 30 years have been exciting ones in the religioushistoriography of Ireland. After a century or more of a highlypolemical approach to religious history, Irish scholars have beenquestioning the interpretation of the past and offering a revisionistapproach to many aspects of this topic. There … Read more
English literary depictions of crazed Irish head-hunters were not entirely contrived. The best propaganda always contains an element of truth. In parts of Ireland decapitation was more than an incidental by-product of blade-fighting. In Connacht, for instance, one of the chieftains of the Burkes was known as Ulick-na-gceann, ‘Ulick of the heads’ (fl. 1536), so … Read more
Late on a cold January night in 1602 an Ulster boy led four Gaelic soldiers silently through the dark to a cabin somewhere in the rolling borderlands between Tyrone, Derry and Donegal. Inside the cabin lay a servant and kinsman of Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, called Tirlough Magnylson [MacNeill’s son]. Curled up beside the … Read more