The battle of the Boyne was a curious affair. It has generated more potent myths than any other armed encounter in Ireland and has been ridiculously overplayed for partisan purposes. But, in truth, it was no great feat for 36,000 well-trained troops with up to forty field pieces to oust 25,000 who had only six … Read more
Professor Finlay Holmes has put us in his debt once again by telling the often very complex story of Irish Presbyterianism in a narrative which is itself a model of clarity. In this book he returns to some themes which he has treated of before in articles in learned journals but which the general reader … Read more
History of the Diocese of Derry, Henry A. Jefferies and Ciaran Devlin (Four Courts Press, hardback £19.95) ISBN 18512824901 Religious Renewal and Reform in the Pastoral Ministry of Bishop James Doyle of Kildare and Lieghlin, 1786-1834 ,Thomas McGrath (Four Courts Press, £35) ISBN 1851823719 Politics, Interdenominational Relations and Education in the Public Ministry of Bishop … Read more
The Ireland in which Alexius Stafford was born and reared, in the mid-1600s, was a troubled land. The great rebellion of 1641 had been followed by the advent of Oliver Cromwell and his subsequent land confiscations and plantations in the early 1650s. Battles, sieges, despoliation and depression had ravaged town and country. By 1688-89, there … Read more
In 1585 the English privy council branded Richard Creagh ‘a dangerous man to be among the Irish for the reverence that is by that nation borne unto him’, and ordered that he should be detained in the Tower of London. The eighteen-year incarceration of the Archbishop of Armagh in London and Dublin was acutely embarrassing … Read more