That last January saw the thirtieth anniversary of the end of an African civil war and that this moment passed without comment in Ireland seems at first glance an unremarkable statement. But this was no run-of-the-mill conflict on a continent which has endured more than its share of such tragedies. The war which erupted in … Read more
Irish missionary effort in America began before the Famine, when most Irish immigrants were non-Catholic, but it matured quickly thereafter between 1845 and 1900 when approximately four million Irish, predominantly Catholic, left their homeland for the United States. Prior to the Famine, priests from the Irish colleges of Spain, especially Salamanca, came to serve in … Read more
The first half of the nineteenth century saw a final surge in Protestant missionary activity in Ireland. This was largely a reaction to the sense of crisis in Protestant circles following both the Act of Union of 1800, and the attainment of Catholic Emancipation in 1829. There was a strong belief amongst evangelical Protestants that … Read more
The Ireland in which Alexius Stafford was born and reared, in the mid-1600s, was a troubled land. The great rebellion of 1641 had been followed by the advent of Oliver Cromwell and his subsequent land confiscations and plantations in the early 1650s. Battles, sieges, despoliation and depression had ravaged town and country. By 1688-89, there … 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