Forty years ago Gerald Simms penned a detailed word-portrait of the city of Dublin as it was on the death of Charles II in 1685. Taking as his starting-point the maps of the city prepared by Bernard de Gomme in 1673 and Thomas Phillips in 1685, and drawing on a wide range of documentary evidence, … Read more
In 1956, shortly after being convicted of violating an anti-boycott law in Montgomery, Alabama, a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King Jr proclaimed: ‘As I look at it, I guess I have committed three sins. The first sin I have committed is being born a Negro. The second sin that I have committed, along … Read more
Serious tension had developed within the leadership of the IRA as a result of the failure of its 1939 bombing campaign in Britain. When this was abandoned, its operations in Northern Ireland were scaled down for the duration of World War II. Both the Belfast and the Dublin governments introduced internment, and several hundred … Read more
In mendicant orders—Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites and Augustinians—monastic life and outside religious activity are combined; neither personal nor community tenure of property are allowed under their original regulations. They shared the characteristics outlined above but were individually distinct owing to such factors as the founder’s … Read more
Following the Relief Act of 1793, the Catholics of Ireland began to erect churches of architectural pretension. In that year in Dublin work started on St Teresa’s, Clarendon Street. Outside Dublin three fine new churches were erected in the 1790s: Waterford Cathedral; … Read more