On 21 September 1601 a Spanish fleet of twenty-eight sail occupied the Irish port at Kinsale with about 3,300 men, disembarking in a badly victualled and furnished condition under the maestro de campo general, Don Juan del Águila. The nightmare spectre that had haunted the Elizabethan state ever since 1585 had come to pass. Earlier … Read more
It is not clear when Basque mariners first began fishing off the coast of Ireland but the ordinances of 1553 of the confraternity of fishermen of the Spanish Basque port of Bermeo indicate that men from there were already fishing in Irish waters by then. Furthermore, in a lawsuit over the fishing voyage of the … Read more
Sir,—I found it odd that you did not aska historian to review The Catholics of Ulster by Marianne Elliott whois not only a noted historian but one of History Ireland’s patrons. Others better qualified or at least possessing ‘the nobility of theGaelic mind’ (to use just one of Mons. Murray’s unhistorical phrases)will, no doubt take … Read more
Maigh Eo na Sacsan (Mayo of the English) bears witness to the earliest contacts between Ireland and England, to an era when cultural contacts between the two countries were characterised by a mutual give and take. Tim Pat Coogan has pointed out that it was only as late as the twelfth century that ‘the influence … Read more
Foras Feasa ar Éirinn is a history of the kingdom of Ireland, written by Geoffrey Keating, an Old English Catholic priest from south County Tipperary, and completed in about 1634. It tells the story of Ireland from the creation of the world to the coming of the Normans. The original version was written in Irish, … Read more