Plantations in Early Modern Ireland

by Raymond Gillespie Between 1580 and 1640 about 370,000 Englishmen and 100,000 Scots left home and family to make their fortune outside their native land. Rising population and demand for increasingly expensive land along with diminishing opportunities in the church or the law for younger sons made self-imposed exile an inescapable fate for many. Some, … Read more

The Military Strategy of the Wexford United Irishmen in 1798

until recently historians of 1798 regarded the rebellion in Wexford as a spontaneous popular reaction to unwarranted government repression and not part of a larger United Irish conspiracy. Scanty references to the county in the manuscript record and the bitter, apparently localised, character of the Wexford conflict seemed to support this interpretation.  Today, inspired by … Read more