The Story of Ireland

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The Story of Ireland Page 38

by Neil Hegarty


  Battle of Yorktown ends American War of Independence

  1782

  Legislative independence accorded to Irish parliament

  1789

  Fall of Bastille; beginning of French Revolution

  1791

  Wolfe Tone’s Argument in Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland; Catholic relief bill passed in Britain; foundation of United Irishmen

  1795

  Foundation of Orange Order; foundation of Catholic seminary at Maynooth

  1796

  French expedition enters Bantry Bay but fails to land

  1798

  United Irish rebellion crushed; death of Tone

  1799

  Act of Union rejected in Irish parliament

  1800

  Passing of Act of Union; Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent

  1801

  Union of Great Britain and Ireland

  1803

  Robert Emmet’s rebellion

  1808

  Thomas Moore’s first collection of Melodies

  1815

  Battle of Waterloo

  1823

  Foundation of Catholic Association

  1824

  Beginning of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland; establishment of free trade area in Britain and Ireland

  1828

  Daniel O’Connell wins Clare by-election

  1829

  Catholic emancipation passed at Westminster

  1832

  Great Reform Bill

  1837

  Accession of Victoria

  1839

  Gustave de Beaumont’s L’Irlande

  1841

  O’Connell becomes Lord Mayor of Dublin

  1842

  Potato blight detected in Europe; first publication of the Nation

  1843

  Monster Meetings across Ireland

  1845

  Beginning of Great Famine

  1847

  Death of O’Connell at Genoa

  1848

  Young Ireland rebellion

  1849

  Famine begins to peter out; first visit of Victoria to Ireland

  1852

  Paul Cullen appointed Archbishop of Dublin

  1858

  Foundation of Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB)

  1859

  Fenian Brotherhood established in New York

  1864

  Establishment of National Gallery of Ireland

  1867

  Fenian Rebellion; execution of ‘Manchester Martyrs’; Clerkenwell bombing

  1868

  William Gladstone becomes prime minister for first time

  1869

  Disestablishment of Church of Ireland; foundation of Irish Tenant League

  1870

  Isaac Butt establishes Home Government Association

  1875

  Charles Stewart Parnell takes his seat in House of Commons

  1877

  Irish obstructionism in parliament; passing of South African Confederation bill is delayed

  1878

  Standish O’Grady’s History of Ireland

  1879

  National Land League founded; Loonmore eviction halted

  1880

  Michael Davitt’s ostracism campaign targets Charles Boycott; Parnell begins relationship with Katharine O’Shea

  1880–1

  First Boer War

  1881–2

  Gladstone’s land reform bills become law; Parnell imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol; Phoenix Park assassinations

  1884

  Foundation of Gaelic Athletic Association

  1886

  First Home Rule bill; Ulster Unionists rally in opposition; bill thrown out by parliament

  1890

  Majority of Parnell’s party withdraws support from him; party splits

  1891

  Death of Parnell in Brighton

  1893

  Foundation of Gaelic League

  1895

  Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest

  1899

  Outbreak of Second Boer War and formation of Irish Brigade in support of Boers; foundation of Irish Literary Theatre; first publication of United Irishman

  1900

  Victoria’s visit to Ireland sparks protests

  1901

  Death of Victoria and accession of Edward VII

  1902

  W. B. Yeats and Augusta Gregory’s Cathleen Ni Houlihan

  1904

  Irish Literary Theatre becomes Abbey Theatre

  1907

  Formation of Sinn Féin; J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World staged at Abbey, provoking public unrest

  1912

  Third Home Rule bill; Ulster Covenant signed

  1913

  ‘Dublin Lock-out’; formation of Ulster Volunteers and Irish Volunteers

  1914

  Ulster and Irish Volunteers execute gun-running operations; Curragh ‘mutiny’; Buckingham Palace Conference; Home Rule passed by parliament and suspended; outbreak of World War I; James Joyce’s Dubliners

  1916

  Easter Rising at Dublin; its leaders executed; battle of the Somme

  1917

  Éamon de Valera wins Clare by-election for Sinn Féin

  1918

  End of World War I; global influenza epidemic kills millions; Sinn Féin victory in general election

  1919

  Meeting of first Dáil; Soloheadbeg ambush

  1920

  Proposed partition of Ireland; sectarian violence in Ulster; Croke Park killings in Dublin; burning of central Cork

  1921

  Burning of Dublin’s Custom House; first elections in post-partition Ireland – inaugural meeting of Northern Ireland parliament; Anglo–Irish Treaty

  1922

  Treaty ratified by Dáil; Michael Collins heads new provisional government; civil war; destruction of Four Courts and Irish national archives; death of Collins; special powers in operation in Northern Ireland; Joyce’s Ulysses

  1923

  Civil war ends; formation of Cumann na nGaedheal government; Yeats awarded Nobel Prize for Literature; Censorship of Films Act passed

  1925

  George Bernard Shaw awarded Nobel Prize for Literature; works begin at Ardnacrusha hydroelectric works

  1926

  Seán O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars sparks disturbances at Abbey

  1927

  Fianna Fáil, led by de Valera, enters Dáil

  1929

  Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September; beginning of Great Depression

  1932

  Fianna Fáil forms its first government

  1933

  Formation of Fine Gael

  1935

  Sale and importation of contraceptives banned in Free State

  1937

  Constitution ratified by referendum

  1938

  Treaty Ports returned to Irish control

  1939

  World War II begins; de Valera declares Irish neutrality

  1941

  Belfast extensively bombed by German aircraft; air attacks on Dublin

  1942

  Patrick Kavanagh’s The Great Hunger

  1943

  Sea mine explosion in Donegal kills 19 men and boys

  1945

  De Valera visits German legation at Dublin to commiserate on death of Hitler

  1947

  Education Act enables free secondary education in Northern Ireland

  1948

  Establishment of National Health Service in Northern Ireland

  1949

  Declaration of Irish Republic; Government of Ireland Act cements Northern Ireland’s position in United Kingdom

  1951

  ‘Mother and Child’ scheme fails to be enacted

  1955

  Republic enters United Nations

  1957

  The Rose Tattoo staged by Pike Theatre, Dublin

&n
bsp; 1960

  Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls

  1961

  Republic applies to join EEC; its application rejected

  1967

  Formation of Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA); second EEC application rejected; free secondary education introduced in republic

  1968

  Civil rights march in Derry ends in violence

  1969

  Burntollet attack; British troops sent to Northern Ireland

  1970

  Arms trial in Republic – Charles Haughey sacked from cabinet; formation of SDLP

  1971

  Ian Paisley establishes DUP; ‘contraceptive train’ travels between Belfast and Dublin

  1972

  Bloody Sunday in Derry

  1973

  Republic and UK join EEC; Sunningdale Agreement

  1974

  Sunningdale collapses; Dublin and Monaghan bombings; Birmingham and Guildford pub bombings

  1976

  Seamus Heaney’s North

  1979

  Charles Haughey becomes taoiseach for first time

  1980

  Brian Friel’s Translations

  1981

  Hunger strikes at Maze prison

  1984

  Report of New Ireland Forum

  1985

  Anglo–Irish Agreement

  1988

  John Hume and Gerry Adams begin secret talks; Remembrance Day bombing at Enniskillen

  1990

  Mary Robinson elected president of Ireland

  1993

  Homosexuality decriminalized in Republic

  1995

  Divorce laws passed in Republic; Heaney wins Nobel Prize for Literature

  1998

  Bloody Sunday Inquiry established; Omagh bombing; Hume and David Trimble awarded Nobel Peace Prize

  2001

  Dissolution of RUC; formation of Police Service of Northern Ireland

  2008

  Bank guarantee scheme in Republic

  2009

  Publication of Ryan Report into child abuse in Republic

  2010

  Bloody Sunday Inquiry report published; international financial 'bailout' of Irish economy

  Acknowledgements

  A great many people have helped in the research and writing of Story of Ireland – through discussion, the sharing of ideas and the reading of various drafts. I should like to thank (again) Albert DePetrillo, my editor at BBC Books, for guiding the project sensitively from its inception; project editor Caroline McArthur; and Stephen Douds, Sean McGuire and Linda Sands at BBC Northern Ireland. I am especially grateful to Catherine Toal for vital and generous assistance.

  My thanks also to Laurence Browne, Lucy Collins, Gillian Cope, Marie Gethins, Anne Mary Luttrell, Ruth McDonnell, Eina McHugh, John Murphy, Molly O’Duffy, Jane O’Halloran, Caitríona O’Reilly, Ursula Peier, Ann Russell and Maria Scott. I am grateful to the librarians at the National Library of Ireland and the Irish Collection at Dublin City Libraries; and particularly to John McManus at Trinity College Library, Dublin.

  Most of all, my thanks to my family: in particular to Charles and Maureen Hegarty and Claire Hegarty; and to John Lovett.

  Lines from ‘A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford’, from Collected Poems (1999) by Derek Mahon, are reproduced by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press.

  Neil Hegarty, 2011

  BBC Books and Ebury Publishing would like to thank Mike Connolly and Fergal Keane, as well as Ailsa Orr, Morag Keating, Darran Marshall, Tom Coulson, Jonathan and Deniece Baker for their help in completing this book.

  Notes

  Introduction

  1. Louis MacNeice, Autumn Journal, Faber and Faber, 1940.

  Prologue

  1. Seamus Heaney, ‘The Biretta’, in Seeing Things (London: Faber, 1991), 27.

  2. Tacitus, Agricola and Germania (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), 74–5.

  3. Ibid., 75.

  Part 1

  Chapter 1 – Children of God

  1. Patrick, Confession, in Philip Freeman, St Patrick of Ireland: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 188.

  2. Cited in Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland, 400–1200 (London and New York: Longman, 1995), 14.

  3. Patrick, Confession, 176.

  4. bid., 180.

  5. Austin Clarke, ‘Pilgrimage’, in W. J. McCormack (ed.), Selected Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), 38.

  6. Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie, “The most adaptable of saints: the cult of St Patrick in the seventeenth century’, in Archivum Hibernicum, Vol. 49 (1995), 82–104.

  7. Quoted in Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization (London: Sceptre, 1995), 183.

  8. Acta SS, Feb. I, 141 (viii, 39), quoted by Donnchadh Ó’Corráin, ‘Ireland c.800: aspects of society’, in Dáibhí Ó’Cróinín (ed.), New History of Ireland I: Prehistoric and Early Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 598.

  9. Paul Durcan, ‘Fat Molly’, in A Snail in My Prime: New and Selected Poems (London: Harvill, 1993), 38.

  10. 1 Samuel 2: 10.

  11. Adamnán, Vita Columbae in Seamus Deane (ed.), Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Vol. I (Derry: Field Day, 1991), 83.

  12. Genesis 12:1.

  13. Bede, A History of the English Church and People, trans. and ed. Leo Sherley-Price (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955), 195.

  14. Sermons of Columbanus, Sermon VII: 2, in CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts, University College, Cork (ucc.ie/celt).

  15. Bede, A History of the English Church and People, 199.

  16. Letters of Columbanus, Letter II: 1, in CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts, University College, Cork (ucc.ie/celt).

  17. Ibid,, Letter II, 7.

  18. Quoted in T. M. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 357.

  Chapter 2 – Landfall

  1. G. N. Garmonsway (trans. and ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (London: J. M. Dent, 1953), 55–6.

  2. Seán MacAirt and Gearoid MacNiocaill (eds), Annals of Ulster (Dublin: Institute of Advanced Studies, 1983), 251.

  3. Anonymous (ninth-century Ireland).

  4. James H. Todd, The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill or The Invasions of Ireland by the Danes and other Norsemen (London, 1867), quoted in Ó. Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland, 262.

  5. John O’Donovan (trans. and ed.), Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, by the Four Masters, From the Earliest period to the Year 1616 (Vol. II), (Dublin: Hodges, Swift and Co., 1854), 741.

  6. Njál’s Saga, trans. Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960), 157.

  Part 2

  Chapter 3 – The Lordship of Ireland

  1. Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales), Expugnatio Hibernica: The Conquest of Ireland, A. B. Scott and F. X. Martin (eds), (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1978), 37.

  2. Peter J. Conradi, At the Bright Hem of God: Radnorshire Pastoral (Bridgend: Seren, 2009), 50.

  3. Giraldus, Expugnatio, 41–2.

  4. The Song of Dermot and the Earl, trans. and ed. G. H. Orpen (Oxford, 1892), 3.

  5. Ibid, 5.

  6. St Bernard of Clairvaux, The Life of St Malachy of Armagh, trans. and ed. H. J. Lawlor (London, [1149] 1920), 37.

  7. Seán MacAirt (ed.), Annals of Innisfallen (Dublin: Institute of Advanced Studies, 1951), 303.

  8. William Hennessy (trans. and ed.), Annals of Loch Cé (London: Longman, 1871), 143.

  9. Annals of Loch Cé, 145.

  10. Giraldus, Expugnatio, 77.

  11. Ibid., 95–7.

  12. See Jessica McMorrow, ‘Women in Medieval Dublin’, in Medieval Dublin, ed. Seán Duffy (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), esp. 205.

  13. Giraldus, Expugnatio, 237.

  14. M. P. Sheehy (ed.), Pontificia Hibernica: medieval papal chancery documents concerning Ireland, 640–1261 (Dublin, 1962–5), cited in F. X. Martin, ‘John, lord of Ireland 1185–1216’
, in Art Cosgrove (ed.), A New History of Ireland II: Medieval Ireland, 1169–1534 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 153.

  15. Chronique de la traison et mort de Richart [sic] Deux Dengleterre, ed. and trans. Benjamin Williams (English Historical Society, 1846), 171; cited in Seán Duffy, ‘King John’s Expedition to Ireland, 1210: The Evidence Reconsidered’, Historical Society Studies, Vol. 30, No. 117 (May 1996), 1–24.

  16. For a longer discussion, see Robin Frame, Colonial Ireland, 1169–1369 (Dublin: Helicon, 1981), esp. 109.

  17. Giraldus, Expugnatio, 195, cited in Frame, Colonial Ireland, 73.

  Chapter 4 – Wasted and Consumed

  1. James Lydon, ‘A land of war’, in A New History of Ireland II, 243.

  2. Friar Clyn, The Annals of Ireland by Friar John Clyn, ed. Richard Butler (Dublin, 1907), 210.

  3. This figure for the population of Dublin is very approximate. Estimates vary considerably and it is impossible to guess the population of Ireland as a whole at this time. For a fuller discussion, see Maria Kelly, The Great Dying: The Black Death in Dublin (Stroud: Tempus, 1993).

 

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