A variety of source material survives from which the history of Gaelic society in the early modern period can be reconstructed. Rather than focusing too narrowly on bardic poetry as a means of interpreting the native Irish response to colonisation, the full range of extant sources should be utilised, in conjunction with the available English … Read more
Jane Ohlmeyer At the height of the ‘general crisis’ which gripped Europe during the middle decades of the seventeenth century, one preacher in 1643 informed the English House of Commons that ‘These are days of shaking and this shaking is universal: the Palatinate, Bohemia, Germania, Catalonia, Portugal, Ireland, England’. He could have added Scotland and … Read more
One of the most argued over events in the career of Hugh O’Neill, second Earl of Tyrone, is his departure from Ireland with Rory O’Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, on 14 September 1607. English contemporaries claimed that he fled in anticipation of the discovery of a plot of his against the government. Later apologists for O’Neill … Read more
The troubles of the last twenty five years have served to focus the minds of Ulster people on their history. They are more conscious than ever of their ancestors-Gaelic, Norman, English, Huguenot, Lowland Scot, Highland Scot. But that consciousness has neglected and all but forgotten one particularly influential immigrant group. Most often they are … Read more
It must have seemed a God-given set of circumstances: in Ireland after the Williamite war many areas of depopulated and unproductive countryside; in Europe several hundred thousand displaced persons ready to migrate with their families, their small means and considerable skills. And to fit the two together were three key people: the begetter of ‘Ie … Read more