The Story of Ireland
Page 38
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).