Capturing the quotidian: New Ross Corporation Books, 1685–1900

The minute books of municipal corporations, while not quite reflecting the views of the humbler citizen, capture the affairs that trouble those with their hands on the levers of power […]

Seventeenth-century security concerns

While day-to-day affairs dominate the material, the earlier books nevertheless expose an undercurrent of tension and a concern for the security of the town, the strategic importance of which was […]

Anson’s circumnavigation, 1740–4

On the outbreak of hostilities between Britain and the Spanish Empire in the Caribbean in 1739, George Anson was commanded to proceed from England to Manila to harass Spanish shipping […]

Ireland’s first school of medicine

Prior to the eighteenth century Ireland’s physicians had trained in Europe—in France, Belgium, Italy, Holland or England. When medicine became well established in Scotland, many Irish medical students, especially those […]

Thomas Molyneux

Thomas Molyneux was the first professor of physic in the new medical school. He was a Trinity graduate, having studied for his BA from 1676 to 1680. Medical studies followed […]