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Record sources: Ireland
This volume calendars material in the National Archives in London relating to policy towards Ireland and its governance in the mid-Tudor period when Edward VI was king of England and Ireland from 1547 to 1553. These state papers reveal not only how the institutions of central government were extended into the provinces, but also the tenor of life in the local communities, especially the towns. For those interested in the history of Anglo-Irish relations in the early modern period, this edition provides valuable information on the roots of English colonial policy in Ireland, and early evidence of native responses to Tudor social, economic and religious policies.
The 1641 Depositions Project aims to conserve, digitise, transcribe and make the depositions available online in a fully TEI compliant format. The project began in 2007 and finished in September 2010. The Ulster Depositions were published online in December 2009, see http://www.tcd.ie/history/1641 and the remaining provinces were published end September 2010. The Irish Manuscripts Commission will publish a hard copy of the 1641 Depositions in 12 volumes.
This edition calendars material in the National Archives in London relating to policy towards Ireland and the governance of Ireland in the late Tudor period. Sir Henry Sidney was sworn in as lord deputy of Ireland on 20 January 1566 and remained in office until March 1571. The documents in this calendar date from the later years of Sir Henry Sidney’s term of office as lord deputy of Ireland; the earlier years were covered in a volume published in 2009.
This edition calendars material in the National Archives in London (TNA, formerly PRO) relating to policy towards Ireland and the governance of Ireland in the late Tudor period. The documents in this calendar date from the opening two years of Sir Henry Sidney’s first term in office as lord deputy of Ireland, from January 1566 to December 1567. While English perspectives on Ireland predominate, historians wishing to concentrate on themes relating to ‘natives’ rather than ‘newcomers’ in early modern Ireland will find the state papers an invaluable source.
The context for the introduction of the Latin charter undoubtedly was the ecclesiastical reform movement that dominated western Christendom from about 1050 onwards and which began to have a discernible impact on the Irish church from no later than c.1100. All the extant Irish royal charters were issued in favour of ecclesiastical beneficiaries and were demonstrably a product of collaboration between Irish kings and reformist clergy. Irish kings, however, were not merely passive recipients of this new documentary reform. They proved adept at exploiting it as a vehicle for their self-promotion and expansion of royal authority. German imperial chancery practice, for example, provided the stylistic model for a charter issued by Diarmait Mac Carthaig, king of Desmond c.1173x7. The known involvement of Diarmait's family with the Schottenklöster of Southern Germany affords a ready explanation for what might otherwise appear to be surprising German influence. The Irish royal charters materially advance understanding of aspects of the ecclesiastical and secular politics of twelfth-century Ireland. This is the first modern edition of the texts, exploring textual transmission and authenticating criteria and providing commentary on their content and historical significance together with detailed annotations of personal and place-names.
Were we dependent on the pre-Norman Irish annals alone, we should know nothing of the early history of the church of Drumlease, near Dromahair, Co. Leitrim. Like many of the other churches of Connacht, Drumlease suffers from the comparative neglect of the western province's early ecclesiastical history on the part of the surviving collections of annals. The ‘Patrician’ texts in the Book of Armagh, however, provide a snap-shot of Drumlease in the later seventh and eighth century, indicating that it was a church of considerable significance in north Connacht at that time. This study comprises two parts. The first, by Colmán Etchingham, introduces the references to Drumlease in the Book of Armagh and examines in detail the relevant passages of the eighth-century text known as the Additamenta. The second part, by Catherine Swift, places Tírechán's reference to Drumlease in the broader context of that seventh-century clergyman's portrayal of the Patrician churches of Connacht in general.
Milo Sweteman was archbishop of Armagh during one of the most turbulent periods in Irish history. His register, the first of its kind to survive medieval Ireland, offers remarkable insights into how the Church operated in the midst of a divided society in the middle of the fourteenth century. The register recounts Sweteman’s disputes over ecclesiastical primacy with the Archbishop of Dublin and his uneasy relations with Irish rulers such as Niall Ó Néill who threatened ‘like a pope or an emperor’ to seize all his lands in Armah, Ó hAnluain who assaulted and threatened his servants, and Mac Aonghusa who made a devastating raid into County Louth in 1374..