Raymond Gillespie

Well-established ideas of monarchy, social hierarchy and honour were under pressure in a fast-changing world. Political, religious, social and economic circumstances were all in flux. The common ambition of every faction was the creation of a usable focus of governance. Thus plantations, the constitutional experiments of Wentworth in the 1630s, the Confederation of the 1640s, the republican 1650s and the royalist reaction of the latter part of the century can be seen not simply as episodes in colonial domination but as part of an on-going attempt to find a modus vivendi within Ireland, often compromised by external influences. This book is not simply a narrative history of politics in seventeenth-century Ireland. It is a social history of governance that, while dealing with the main political, religious and economic developments, has at its interpretative core the process of making a new society out of competing factions.

Making Ireland Modern

Seventeenth-century Ireland

Andrew Hadfield

The Oxford History of the Irish Book is a major new series that charts the development of the book in Ireland from its origins within an early medieval manuscript culture to its current incarnation alongside the rise of digital media in the twenty-first century. Volume III: The Irish Book in English, 1550-1800 contains a series of groundbreaking essays that seek to explain the fortunes of printed word from the early Renaissance to the end of the eighteenth century. The essays in section one explain the development of print culture in the period, from its first incarnation in the small area of the English Pale around Dublin, dominated by the interests of the English authorities, to the more widespread dispersal of the printing press at the close of the eighteenth century, when provincial presses developed their own character and style either alongside or as a challenge to the dominant intellectual culture. Section two explains the crucial developments in the structure and technical innovation of the print trade; the role played by private and public collections of books; and the evidence of changing reading practices throughout the period. The third and longest section explores the impact of the rise of print. Essays examine the effect that the printed book had on religious and political life in Ireland, providing a case study of the impact of the French Revolution on pamphlets and propaganda in Ireland; the transformations illustrated in the history of historical writing, as well as in literature and the theatre, through the publication of play texts for a wide audience. Others explore the impact that print had on the history of science and the production of foreign language books. The volume concludes with an authoritative bibliographical essay outlining the sources that exist for the study of the book in early modern Ireland. This is an authoritative volume with essays by key scholars that will be the standard guide for many years to come.

The Irish Book in English, 1550-1800

The Oxford History of the Irish Book, Volume III

Bernadette Cunningham

This quirky, yet important book, breaks new ground in the study of Gaelic Ireland by exploiting the rich source material contained in the sixteenth-century Annals of Ulster, Annals of Connacht, the Annals of Loch Cé and the Four Masters. While attention has previously been paid to poetry in Irish as a source for the history of the 16th century, the richness of the prose sources have not been exploited by historians. The annals contain a series of short accounts of events arranged by year. The storytelling of the annalists provides the openings into the past that are the key to this book, which uses seven of their longer stories to examine, at micro level, aspects of Gaelic society that created them. The significance of each story is illuminated by reference to other contemporary evidence, including the genealogies and the poetry. The text is provided in both the original Irish with an English language translation, with extensive writings placing the passages in their historical time.

Microhistories from the Sixteenth-century Irish Annals

Stories from Gaelic Ireland

This volume provides a picture of life in the suburbs of seventeenth-century Dublin. Situated, as they were in the Liberties area of the city, outside the control of the corporation, these two parishes provide unique evidence for what was the most rapidly expanding parts of Dublin. Central to managing that growth was the parish, with its network of parochial officials and taxation mechanisms. This is the second volume in the 'Texts and Calendars' series that publishes important records from the collections of the Representative Church Body Library, Dublin.

The Vestry Records of the Parishes of St. Catherine and St. James, Dublin, 1657-1692

Brian Mercer Walker

Volume III of the Oxford History of the Irish Book outlines the impact of the rise of print in early modern Ireland in a series of groundbreaking essays, charting the development of a print culture in Ireland and the transformations it brought to conceptions of politics, religion, and literature. This is an authoritative volume with essays by key scholars that will be the standard guide for many years to come.

"For most people, nineteenth-century Belfast is the very essence of an industrial city, boasting as it did by 1900 the world's largest spinning mill, the most productive shipyard, the biggest ropeworks and tobacco factory. This book looks beyond that world to reveal an earlier Belfast where the foundations for its later industrial prowess were laid. It charts the town's remarkable growth from site to city, from the first mentions of it as long ago as the seventh century through to the 13th-century Anglo-Norman settlement and Gaelic revival, to the Plantation town of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It re-traces not only the development of the early streets, and their names, but also the lives of those who walked and lived in them. In doing so it recreates something of the thriving commercial settlement and port that came increasingly to dominate the life of the region it served - Ulster - in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." "Using a unique series of maps, together with archaeological and documentary evidence that has been expertly pieced together, the book revolutionises our understanding of this, the most Ulster of towns, before the coming of industrialisation. Just as importantly, it reminds us that Belfast has always stood, in the poet Derek Mahon's lyrical phrase, a 'hill at the top of every street'."--BOOK JACKET.

The Origins and Growth of an Ulster Town to 1750

Early Belfast

Associate Professor of History Raymond Gillespie, Mria

Senior Lecturer in Modern History Raymond Gillespie, Mria

Gillespie looks at the role of religion in the shaping of early modern Ireland, taking a new approach which identifies the commonalities of religious thought and the differences between confessional groups.

Belief and Religion in Early Modern Ireland

Devoted People

The importance of parish records for the reconstruction of many aspects of past societies is becoming clear from research in other countries. Irish parochial records, however, have not survived well. This volume provides an edition of what is probably the most important set of vestry records in Ireland. The records of the parish of St John in Dublin form the oldest continuous set of vestry minutes, churchwardens' accounts and local taxation records in existence. Situated as the parish was in the core of the medieval city these documents provide a unique insight into the world of an urban parish in the throes of transition as Dublin moved from a medieval into a modern world. The text casts light not only on the problems of the established church but also on the everyday life of the parishioners as they struggled to maintain the church and the world associated with it in the face of dramatic urban change. This volume will be of interest not only to those concerned with Dublin and religious history but to everyone interested in urban change in the early modern world. This is the first volume in a new Text and Calendars series that aims to publish important records from the collections of the Representative Church Body Library, Dublin, which is the principal repository for the archives and manuscripts of the Church of Ireland.

Raymond Gillespie

Books

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