‘Crown jewels’ generally refer to royal ornaments used in the ceremony of consecration, and the formal ensigns of monarchy worn or carried on occasions of state. The term may also be used to describe those collections of rich personal jewellery brought together by various European sovereigns as valuable assets not of their individual estates but … Read more
During the middle of the nineteenth century an eccentric and wealthy young man who happened to like machines and astronomy embellished Ireland’s place in scientific history by building one of the largest and most dangerous telescopes in the world; his name was William Parsons, third Earl of Rosse to Birr Castle, County Offaly. Born on … Read more
Study of the Black Death in Ireland is fraught with difficulties: the few Irish chroniclers and annalists tell us relatively little about it; a further complication was the almost continuous warfare and the consequent economic decline already underway well before the arrival of plague in 1348. Nevertheless, there is enough evidence to suggest that the … Read more
These two collections of essays expand on works such as Micheline Kerney-Walsh’s An exile of Ireland, Hugh O’Neill, Prince of Ulster, emphasising that there was much more to Irish continental migration than dispossessed aristocracy and unemployed soldiery looking to new horizons. Both books also hint at a great deal of research waiting to be done … Read more
For the last fifteen years ‘confessionalisation’ has been one of the most prominent concepts in German scholarship on early modern Europe. In the wake of the methodological approaches of Heinz Schilling and Wolfgang Reinhard concerning the role of religion in social change and state formation scholars have explored the impact of confessionalisation both on German … Read more