November 14
Published in On this Day listing- 1981 Revd Robert Bradford (40), Ulster Unionist Party MP for South Belfast, was shot dead by IRA gunmen in a community centre in Finaghy, Belfast. An attendant at the centre was also killed.
- 1920 Fr Michael Griffin from Barna, Co. Galway, was abducted from his home by Auxiliaries. His body, with a single gunshot wound to the head, was later found in a shallow grave.
- 1981 The Revd Robert Bradford, Official Unionist MP for Belfast South, was assassinated by the IRA at a constituency clinic in Finaghy.
- 1918 Séamas O’Kelly (43), playwright, novelist and journalist, died from a brain haemorrhage following an incursion into his office by an anti-Sinn Féin mob celebrating the armistice.
- 1827 Thomas Addis Emmet, elder brother of Robert Emmet, United Irishman and lawyer who became the first attorney-general of New York State (1812–13), died.
- 1622 Milar Magrath (aged c. 100), clerical rogue, died. A Franciscan friar who married and fathered nine children, a Catholic bishop who turned Anglican and accumulated a portfolio of bishoprics—famously sitting as both a Catholic and an Anglican bishop over a nine-year period—and a collaborator with Elizabeth I’s anti-Catholic regime, Magrath was a supreme opportunist … and a great survivor, living through ecclesiastical upheaval and two major rebellions. Appointed bishop of Down and Connor in 1565, he took the Oath of Supremacy and was rewarded with the diocese of Cashel in 1571, a post he held until his death. During the Desmond Rebellions he served both sides: enough harassment of the Catholic clergy to placate the Crown and the odd tip-off to keep the rebels at bay. And if his cathedral was described as ‘no better than a hog sty’, he was rewarded with Waterford and Lismore and later Killala and Achonry. During the Nine Years War he again pledged his loyalty, at the same time reassuring his kinsman, Hugh O’Neill, that he would return to Catholicism but ‘had to see to his children’, all of whom held lucrative posts in the see of Cashel, and, of course, his wife, described as ‘a life-long devout Catholic’. Even in his 90s, with his churches in ruins, he was still seeking new bishoprics, or at least what he called a ‘reasonable pension’, being, as he put it, ‘aged, impotent, impaired, and almost quite spent in mind, means and credit’. In the meantime, he was making overtures to Rome, through his Franciscan brethren, about reconverting to Catholicism. There is no evidence, however, of a deathbed conversion.
Above: Milar Magrath—a supreme opportunist.
- 1614 Giolla Brighde (Bonaventure) Ó hEódhusa, Franciscan priest who produced the first printed work of the Catholic Counter-reformation, a cat-echism in Irish, died in Louvain.
- 1622 Milar Magrath (98/99), clerical rogue who held Catholic and Anglican bishoprics at various times, died.
- 1922 The BBC, with a mission to ‘inform, educate and entertain’, took to the airwaves with a short news bulletin and a weather forecast.
Personal Histories
On this Day
February 6
- 1840
Above: Dubliner Frederick Edward Maning—sat as a judge in New Zealand’s Native Land Court, where his considerable knowledge of the Maori language, customs, traditions and prejudices served him well.
The Treaty of Waitangi proclaimed British sovereignty over New Zealand. Designed to safeguard the interests of the Empire and to appease sections of the native Maori population who sought Crown protection, the treaty was negotiated by the recently appointed lieutenant-governor, Captain William Hobson from Waterford. It was considerably flawed, however, not least because of differences in wording between the English and Maori versions. In any case, the pressures of the post broke Hobson’s health, sending him to an early grave two years later. Prominent amongst opponents of the treaty on the Maori side at the time was Dubliner F.E. Maning. A big man with considerable outback skills and a colourful personality, he had been adopted by the Maori as a ‘Pakeha Maori’—a European turned native—and had purchased a 200-acre farm and taken a Maori wife. Though he argued that the Maori would never willingly accept European domination, his opposition mellowed with time. When tensions over disputed land purchases eventually led to the New Zealand Wars (1845–72), he gave his support to the chief Hone Heke, one of the principal antagonists opposing the government, while at the same time using his influence with the Maori to intercede on behalf of settlers. By the end of the war he was firmly on the government side and sat as a judge in the Native Land Court, where his considerable knowledge of the Maori language, customs, traditions and prejudices served him well. His A history of the war in the north of New Zealand against the chief Heke (1862) and Old New Zealand (1863), partly a lament for the lost freedom enjoyed before European rule, are regarded as classics of New Zealand literature.
- 1971 Gunner Robert Curtis (20) of the Royal Artillery Regiment was shot by an IRA sniper during disturbances in north Belfast, the first serving British soldier to die violently in the Troubles.
- 1968 AWilliam Conor (c. 87), an artist renowned for his portrayals of working-class life in Ulster, died.
- 1958 A British European Airways aircraft bringing the Manchester United team home from Belgrade crashed on take-off at Munich airport. The 21 who died included team members, sports journalists and club officials.
- 1918 The Representation of the People Act gave the vote to all men over 21 and most women over 30 in the United Kingdom.
- 1911 Ronald Reagan, US Republican statesman and 40th president (1980–8), born in Tampico, Illinois. During his four-day visit to the Republic of Ireland in June 1984 Reagan visited Ballyporeen, Co. Tipperary, from where his paternal great-grandparents, Michael and Catherine Reagan, emigrated to Illinois in the early nineteenth century
- 1564 Christopher Marlowe, poet and dramatist, notably author of Doctor Faustus, born in Canterbury, Kent.