The Irish and the Atlantic slave trade

It was the Stuarts who introduced the Irish to the slave trade. Charles II returned to the throne in 1660 at a time when it was becoming clear that sugar […]

A medieval ‘power couple’:

In the late twelfth-century Anglo-Norman marriage market, the teenage Isabel de Clare was a very desirable prize. Under Anglo-Norman feudal law, the marriage of her parents, Strongbow and Aoife, and the related […]

Bristol’s trade with Ireland and the Continent 1503–1601: the evidence of the exchequer customs accounts

Susan Flavin and Evan T. Jones (eds) (Four Courts Press, E65) ISBN 9781846821820   This 1,094-page tome reproduces the details of the cargoes of ships plying between Ireland and the […]

Tv eye

Rapairí Scun Scan Productions Six-part series, Nov.–Dec. 2009, TG4 by John Gibney   Rapairí set itself the task of examining the lives of six ‘outlaws’ active in Ireland from the […]

What the witchcraft bishop did in Ireland: the controversial career of Francis Hutchinson, 1660–1739

  Francis Hutchinson was no ordinary clergyman. Posterity chiefly remembers him for his condemnation of witchcraft trials in his famous book An historical essay concerning witchcraft . . . (1718). He […]