John Derricke’s twelve woodcuts are the most famous images of the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland. The Irish chief and his entourage feasting in the open air, Sir Henry Sidney departing Dublin Castle, the English army on the march and the submission of Turlough O’Neill are amongst the images most frequently used to illustrate history books, … Read more
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
Forty years ago Gerald Simms penned a detailed word-portrait of the city of Dublin as it was on the death of Charles II in 1685. Taking as his starting-point the maps of the city prepared by Bernard de Gomme in 1673 and Thomas Phillips in 1685, and drawing on a wide range of documentary evidence, … Read more
In mendicant orders—Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites and Augustinians—monastic life and outside religious activity are combined; neither personal nor community tenure of property are allowed under their original regulations. They shared the characteristics outlined above but were individually distinct owing to such factors as the founder’s … Read more
Our understanding of the Church in Ireland before the Tudor reformations has long been distorted by a paradigm that insisted that it was ‘in decline’. Historians conventionally trawled through the records of centuries to find instances of pluralism, absenteeism, concubinage, simony and other disorders, without putting that evidence into context or offering any assessment as … Read more