From The Historic Case for Irish Independence by Darrell Figgis
12. The day of England's difficulty had been the hour of Ireland's relief. But in 1486 England settled her dynastic feud, and the day of Ireland's agony was re-opened. It was now to prove an agony hardly to be surpassed in history. The first act was to purge and strengthen the Pale. Lately the intellectual activity of the nation had flowed through the Pale, and envoys of that culture had come, who, as an English State document complained, "by their Irish gifts and minstrelsy provoked the people to an Irish order." Moreover, the Parliament of the Pale had declared its legislative independence. Therefore, the first act was to remedy both these things. The Pale Parliament was compelled to pass a law that restricted it from considering any measure until the heads of that measure had first been approved in Council. Then the Statutes of Kilkenny were re-affirmed. The next step, in pursuance of the old policy, was to break the considerable prosperity and ease the nation had achieved. This was done by a refinement of the old policy of dividing the national forces, and skilful use was made of the unsettlement that had inevitably been left in the train of the first invasion.
The most powerful man in the nation was FitzGerald, with the English title of Earl of Kildare. It had hitherto been a firm rule never to appoint a Viceroy who was not of English birth and blood, but now Kildare was created Lord Lieutenant with the widest powers. He was a man of great character and dignity; but since now to strengthen the King of England's authority was to increase his own power, it was little wonder that an era of wars opened in which every man's hand was against every other man's hand. At all times, in the best of ordered States, statesmanship is fully employed in holding together the necessarily contradictory parts of a nation; and such statesmanship is counted among the highest gifts with which men may be endowed; but now Ireland was given over to a foreign statecraft whose whole skill was employed in promoting such contradictions with a view to weakening the nation whose extinction was determined. Nor had the nation recovered the unity and stability with which that attempt might have been repelled. On Fitzgerald's death his son was appointed in his stead, and succeeded so well, by continuous warfare, in strengthening himself, that he was committed to the Tower of London, while his son was driven into raising the standard of rebellion. The result was that the son, known as Silken Thomas, with five of his uncles, were beheaded in London. Thus the family was obliterated, after it had been skilfully used to weaken and disrupt the nation.
Truelove's Journal: A Bookshop Novella
From a sad, comfortless childhood Giles Truelove developed into a reclusive and uncommunicative man whose sole passion was books. For so long they were the only meaning to his existence. But when fate eventually intervened to have the outside world intrude upon his life, he began to discover emotions that he never knew he had.
This is a story for the genuine booklover, penned by an Irish bookseller under the pseudonym of Ralph St. John Featherstonehaugh.
Annals of the Famine in Ireland
Annals of the Famine in Ireland, by Asenath Nicholson, still has the power to shock and sadden even though the events described are ever-receding further into the past. When you read, for example, of the poor widowed mother who was caught trying to salvage a few potatoes from her landlord's field, and what the magistrate discovered in the pot in her cabin, you cannot help but be appalled and distressed.
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger
This book, the prequel to Annals of the Famine in Ireland cannot be recommended highly enough to those interested in Irish social history. The author, Mrs Asenath Nicholson, travelled from her native America to assess the condition of the poor in Ireland during the mid 1840s. Refusing the luxury of hotels and first class travel, she stayed at a variety of lodging-houses, and even in the crude cabins of the very poorest. Not to be missed!
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Henry Ford Jones' book, first published in 1915 by Princeton University, is a classic in its field. It covers the history of the Scotch-Irish from the first settlement in Ulster to the American Revolutionary period and the foundation of the country.
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
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