The last conventional battle in Irish history was fought on Sunday 12 July 1691 at Aughrim, Co. Galway. A 20,000-strong Irish Jacobite army under the command of French Lt.-Gen. St Ruth occupied a defensive position stretching over one and a half miles along the ridge from Aughrim village. On the opposite, north-east or Ballinasloe, side … Read more
John Toland (1670-1722) was probably born near Clonmany in Inishowen, County Donegal, into a Catholic Irish-speaking environment. As a child he courted infamy by arguing about theology with the local priest. At fifteen he converted to Anglicanism and a few years later became a Dissenter while studying in Glasgow. A restless maverick, Toland was both … Read more
Following Henry VIII’s break with Rome—leaving England diplomatically weakened and strategically vulnerable to her largest European rivals, France and Spain—an increasing number of royal officials regarded the need to consolidate and expand the English lordship of Ireland beyond the confines of the Pale as an urgent matter of self-defence. Henry VIII was the first English … Read more
As topics go, the Spanish Armada has everything: great personalities, grand strategy, warfare on land and sea, diplomatic manoeuvres and conspiracies, propaganda in abundance and religions to die for—all available in a rich range of primary sources (documentary, visual and artefactual) and in a variety of secondary literature and websites. Many of the issues involved, … Read more
This book is its author’s interpretation of documents from Spanish sources concerning Hugh O’Neill during the period 1602-1616. Previous writers, such as Sean Ó Faoláin, had to rely on sparse and hostile English sources which portrayed him during his exile in Rome as a man cowed by defeat, blind, drunk, melancholic, an image these documents … Read more