‘Hags of hell’:late medieval Irish kern

There is a moment in the second part of Shakespeare’s Henry VI when Cardinal Beaufort warns that: ‘The uncivil kerns of Ireland are in arms And temper clay with blood […]

Dervorgilla: scarlet woman or scapegoat?

The pious old man clutches his pilgrim staff as he crests a hill overlooking Lough Gill. He turns to view his kingdom laid out before him. It is Tiernan O’Rourke […]

“Relentlessly striving for more”: Hugh de Lacy in Ireland

‘He paid much attention to his own private affairs, and was most careful in the administration of the office entrusted to him and in his conduct of public affairs. Although […]

Returning to core principles

                      In mendicant orders—Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites and Augustinians—monastic life and outside religious activity are combined; neither personal nor community tenure […]

A church ‘in decline’? The pre-Reformation Irish Church

Our understanding of the Church in Ireland before the Tudor reformations has long been distorted by a paradigm that insisted that it was ‘in decline’. Historians conventionally trawled through the […]