The Gaelic kingdom of Uí Chennselaig, which was controlled by a dynasty of the same name, is substantially represented by the modern county of Wexford. Some of the ten divisions, or tuath, into which Uí Chennselaig was divided are represented by the baronies of Bantry, Shelburne, Shelmalier, Forth and Bargy. From the tenth century onwards … Read more
In the period 1250 to 1650 covered by this book there was no single entity known as Gaelic Ireland. The term has been devised by modern historians to signify collectively the numerous quasi-autonomous Gaelic and Gaelicised lordships that existed in medieval Ireland. The sources from which the detailed workings of individual Gaelic lordships in the … 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
A casual observer moving through the modern landscape might assume that the reduction of the built heritage and conspicuous places of late medieval Gaelic Ireland is a recent phenomenon, but altered views and loss of place were integral to the Gaelic experience from the late sixteenth century onwards. This is most apparent in regard to … 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