Padraig Lenihan assesses William of Orange’s performance at the Battle of the Boyne. When he painted William of Orange, as he did so many times, Jan Wyck (1652–1700) was especially fond of posing his hero gripping a sword in his right hand, looking at the viewer, and sitting calmly atop a rearing white horse. The … Read more
In view of the centrality of parliament to the history and historiography of the Ireland of the ‘Protestant ascendancy’, it is surprising that there is no modern study to compare with P.D.G. Thomas’s forensically detailed reconstruction of the operation of the British House of Commons in the eighteenth century for either house of the Irish … Read more
Sixteenth-century clergy in Ireland were, for the most part, singularly ill-equipped to preach and spread religious reform throughout the country, and Meath was not exempt from this general malaise. The clergy in the diocese of Meath lacked discipline and were not highly regarded, particularly by the Protestant authorities of the time. Hugh Brady, an Elizabethan … Read more
To the north of the Old Library in Trinity College sits a bay of over 1,000 books and pamphlets donated to the library in the late eighteenth century. The main contributor was a Dublin politician, Theophilus Butler. He was born in 1669 in County Cavan. He had two brothers, James and Brinsley. On 27 September … Read more
The O’Neill lordship of Tír Eoghain was the most powerful Gaelic lordship in Ireland. It was bigger than the modern county of Tyrone, taking in most of County Armagh and what is now the barony of Loughinsholin in south Derry. The central location of this large polity in the north gave Tír Eoghain a natural … Read more