NOVEMBER 14/1622 Milar Magrath (aged c. 100), clerical rogue, died. A Franciscan friar who married and fathered nine children, a Catholic bishop who turned Anglican and accumulated a portfolio of bishoprics—famously sitting as both a Catholic and an Anglican bishop over a nine-year period—and a collaborator with Elizabeth I’s anti-Catholic regime, Magrath was a supreme … Read more
By Damien McLellan Recently I set about locating the church—or, more realistically, the site of the church—that Henry II was said to have founded in Waterford City in atonement for his part in the murder of Thomas à Becket, his former close friend before he appointed him archbishop of Canterbury in 1162 (see ‘Reclaiming an … Read more
On the face of it, the recent decision of the Colombian electorate to reject a peace deal drawing a line under 52 years of armed conflict with FARC guerillas—albeit with the slimmest of majorities, half of 1%—was extraordinary. What was even more extraordinary was that 62.56% of the registered electorate didn’t bother to vote. Hubris … Read more