seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA


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Birth of John Thomas Troy, Archbishop of Dublin

John Thomas Troy, an Irish Dominican friar who serves as Archbishop of Dublin from 1786 to 1823, is born at Annefield House, near Porterstown, County Dublin on May 10, 1739.

Troy receives his early education at Liffey Street, Dublin. At the age of sixteen he joins the Dominican Order and proceeds to their house of San Clemente at Rome. Historian Edward D’Alton notes that he is “amenable to discipline, diligent in his studies, and talented.” He makes rapid progress, and while still a student is appointed to give lectures in philosophy. Subsequently, he teaches theology and canon law, and finally becomes prior/rector of the convent in 1772.

When Thomas Burke, the Bishop of Ossory, dies in 1776, the priests of the diocese recommend one of their number, Father Molloy, to Rome for the vacant see, and the recommendation is endorsed by many of the Irish bishops. But Troy, who is held in high esteem at Rome, has already been appointed Bishop of Ossory. He is consecrated at Leuven in June 1777 by the nuncio to Flanders, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Ignazio Busca.

Troy arrives at Kilkenny in August 1777 and for the next nine years he Labour a hard for the spiritual interests of his diocese. Maddened by excessive rents and tithes, and harried by grinding tithe-proctors, farmers have banded themselves together in a secret society called the “Whiteboys,” so called from the white smocks the members wear in their nightly raids. They attack landlords, bailiffs, agents, and tithe-proctors, and often commit fearful outrages. Bishop Troy frequently and sternly denounces them, declaring any who join the secret society to be excommunicated. He has no sympathy with oppression, but he had lived long in Rome, and does not fully appreciate the extent of misery in which the poor Catholic masses live.

Troy is ready to condemn all violent efforts for reform, and has no hesitation in denouncing not only all secret societies in Ireland, but also “our American fellow-subjects, seduced by specious notions of liberty.” This makes him unpopular. He is zealous in correcting abuses in his diocese and in promoting education. So well is this recognized at Rome that in 1781, in consequence of some serious troubles which have arisen between the primate and his clergy, Troy is appointed Administrator of Armagh. He holds this office until 1782.

Upon the death of Archbishop John Carpenter of Dublin in 1786, Troy is appointed to succeed him. At Dublin, as at Ossory, he shows his zeal for religion, his sympathy with authority, and his distrust of popular movements, especially when violent means are employed. Though his circular, issued on March 15, 1792, disavowing the authority of any ecclesiastical power to absolve subjects from their allegiance, is believed to influence the concession in that year of the relaxations embodied in Langrishe’s Act, and the extension of the franchise to Roman Catholics in 1793, he declines to associate himself with John Keogh and other Catholic reformers in their demands for further relief.

In early 1798, the French Directory conquers Rome, and establishes the Roman Republic. Its ally in Ireland, the Society of United Irishmen, starts a rebellion in May 1798. Troy issues a sentence of excommunication against all those of his flock who decide to join the rebellion. In a pastoral read in all the churches, he speaks of the clerical organisers of the rebellion as “vile prevaricators and apostates from religion, loyalty, honour, and decorum, degrading their sacred character, and the most criminal and detestable of rebellious and seditious culprits.” Hus action at this time appears to endanger his life. But the influence he has acquired with the government enables him to moderate the repressive measures taken by the authorities. Believing that Catholic emancipation can never be conceded by the Irish parliament, he is one of the most determined supporters of the Union.

In 1799, Troy agrees to accept the veto of government on the appointment of bishops in Ireland, and even when the other bishops, feeling they have been tricked by Pitt and Castlereagh, repudiate the veto, he continues to favour it. However, in 1809, he recommends Daniel Murray be appointed his coadjutor. Murray is an uncompromising opponent of the veto, and while Troy’s coadjutor, makes trips in 1814 and 1815 to Rome concerning the controversy.

In April 1815, Archbishop Troy lays the foundation of St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Marlborough Street, Dublin, but does not live to see it completed. He dies in Dublin on May 11, 1823, at the age of eighty-four. He dies very poor, leaving scarce sufficient to pay for his burial, and is interred in the unfinished St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral.

In the administration of his diocese and in his private life, Troy is eminently zealous, pious, and charitable. Although his cordial relations with the government expose him to many suspicions and accusations, there is no ground for questioning the integrity of his motives and conduct, which are inspired by his views of the interest of his church. His distrust of revolutionary tendencies in civil affairs is fully aligned with the policy of the Vatican throughout his career. John D’Alton speaks of Troy as “a truly learned and zealous pastor, … a lover and promoter of the most pure Christian morality, vigilant in the discharge of his duty, and devotedly solicitous not only for the spiritual good of those consigned to his charge, but also for the public quiet of the state.”


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Death of Nuala O’Faolain, Journalist & Writer

Nuala Brigid Anne O’Faolain, journalist and writer, dies in Blackrock, Dublin, on May 9, 2008. Her debut memoir, Are You Somebody?, published when she is in her mid-fifties, becomes a sensation in Ireland and a worldwide bestseller.

O’Faolain is born in Dublin on March 1, 1940, the second of nine children of Tomás O’Faolain and Kathleen O’Sullivan. Originally a schoolteacher and Army lieutenant, under the pen name Terry O’Sullivan, her father becomes a prominent social diarist for the Evening Press in Dublin. He is distant from his children and engages in extra-marital affairs which produce at least two half-siblings. Despite earning as much money as the newspaper’s editor, Douglas Gageby, he does not share his income with his family. The family lives in poor conditions, frequently going hungry. Her mother becomes an alcoholic, going to the pub every day at 4 p.m. and not returning home until midnight.

O’Faolain attends convent school in Dublin but is expelled at the age of fourteen after going home from dances with a married man. She then goes to a boarding school in County Monaghan, whose austere environment and strict educational standards benefit her. From there, she studies English literature at University College Dublin (UCD), where she runs in a social circle that includes Mary Lavin, John McGahern, Patrick Kavanagh, and Louis MacNeice. Although she drops out of her studies temporarily and spends time working menial jobs in England, with financial assistance from Lavin and others, she graduates in 1961. On scholarships, she studies medieval English at the University of Hull before completing a postgraduate degree in 19th-century English literature at the University of Oxford. She then returns to Dublin to work at UCD as an academic in the English literature department, which brings her into contact with the bohemian Dublin literary scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In 1970, O’Faolain moves to London to work for the BBC. She is a producer at the Community Programme Unit, which seeks to allow members of the public to create programmes for national broadcast on human interest topics like transgender people, anti-pornography protests, and community organising in the Bogside. She also makes programmes with the arts faculty of the Open University, and teaches evening classes at Morley College. During this period, she shows little interest in Ireland, regarding the country as backward and unsophisticated, but a visit to the Merriman Summer School in County Clare in 1974 sparks new enthusiasm. In 1977, she moves back to Dublin to work for the public broadcaster, RTÉ, where she becomes a colleague of female journalists like Doireann Ní Bhriain, Marian Finucane, and Nell McCafferty – later her partner – who are making programmes about Irish society with a feminist bent. She Is the producer of Women Today, a pioneering radio programme, from 1983 to 1986. One series she works on, Plain Tales, a televised interview programme in which women speak directly to camera about their life experiences, wins a Jacob’s Award in 1985.

O’Faolain has an interest in books from an early age, and credits voracious reading for helping her through a difficult childhood. She works as a book reviewer for The Times. Between 1990 and 1993, she co-presents Booklines, a television programme about books for RTÉ, a programme she says “nobody ever watched because it was on terribly late at night.”

In 1986, Conor Brady, the editor of The Irish Times, offers O’Faolain a newspaper column after hearing her being interviewed by Gay Byrne on the radio. Brady is struck by her ability to “infuse ordinary people’s everyday activities with value and interest.” The column becomes a major success and she is awarded journalist of the year in 1986.

O’Faolain acts as a roving commentator for The Irish Times, covering the 1994 Cregg Wood murders in County Clare, and visiting Northern Ireland at the time of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Following periods of leave while she works on her books, she leaves the paper in 2002, and writes a column in the Sunday Tribune from 2005 until her death.

O’Faolain never marries and has no children. Although she writes about her relationships with men and women, she does not identify as bisexual, though others have described her as such. She suffers from alcoholism. After Are You Somebody?, she divides her time between Ireland and New York City. During the final years of her life, she is in a relationship with a Brooklyn-based lawyer, John Low-Beer, whom she meets on Match.com.

O’Faolain is diagnosed with metastatic cancer while living in New York City in early 2008. She experiences a strange feeling in the right side of her body and presents at the emergency department of a hospital, where she is told that she has primary tumours in her lungs which has spread to her brain and liver, and that her cancer is incurable. She refuses chemotherapy.

O’Faolain returns to Ireland and is interviewed by her friend, Marian Finucane, on her radio show about her terminal illness on April 12, 2008. Both O’Faolain and Finucane are in tears during the interview, which is recorded in Galway, where she is undergoing radiotherapy. She tells Finucane: “I don’t want more time. As soon as I heard I was going to die, the goodness went from life”. Her frank discussion of her illness leads to the interview being preceded by a warning that her comments may be upsetting to others with life-threatening conditions. She says that she does not believe in God or an afterlife, but as in the song “Thíos i Lár an Ghleanna,” she is asking for help she knows will not come from a god she does not believe in. The interview has a major public impact in Ireland. After Finucane’s death in 2020, the Irish Independent describes it as “one of the most extraordinary [interviews] in the history of Irish broadcasting.”

In the final weeks of her life, O’Faolain travels Europe with close friends and family, staying in the Ritz Hotel in Paris and visiting the Berlin State Opera and the Prado Museum in Madrid for the first time. She dies in a hospice in Blackrock, Dublin, late on May 9, 2008. Her funeral takes place in the Church of Our Lady of the Visitation in Fairview in north Dublin on May 13. Her ashes are buried in Kilbarrack Cemetery in north Dublin with her maternal grandparents, Terence and Marion O’Sullivan, and her brother, Dermot Phelan.


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Death of Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne, Lord of Ranelagh

Fiach mac Aodha Ó Broin (anglicised as Feagh or Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne), the son of the chief of the O’Byrnes of the Gabhail Raghnaill, is executed in Farranerin, County Wicklow, on May 8, 1597.

His sept, a minor one, claims descent from the 11th century King of Leinster, Bran Mac Máel Mórda, and is centered at Ballinacor North in Glenmalure, a steep valley in the fastness of the Wicklow Mountains. Their chiefs style themselves as Lords of Ranalagh. The territory of the Gabhail Rabhnaill stretches from Glendalough south to the Forest of Shillelagh in Wexford and west to the borders of present-day County Carlow, an area of some 150,000 acres.

By the time of his death in 1579, O’Byrne’s father, Hugh MacShane O’Byrne, has brought his sept to prominence much to the discomfort of the senior branch of the clan, the Crioch Branagh. The Gabhaill Rabhaill has allied themselves to several leading clans in Leinster and are related by blood and marriage to the Kavanaghs, O’ Tooles, O’Connors and the O’Moores.

O’Byrne makes a name for himself as an enemy of the English. Resenting the greed and cruelty of the Elizabethan adventurers and settlers, he raids their villages and kills them or drives them out. He is appalled at the ruthless cruelty of the seneschals (Stewarts) Thomas Masterson and Sir Henry Harrington and in 1580 goes into open rebellion when Masterson summarily execute many Kavanagh clansmen.

Other clans join with O’Byrne and when James Eustace, 3rd Viscount Baltinglass, angered by the treatment of the Catholic Old English also rebells, O’Byrne joins with him. The English are appalled at this, already Munster is in turmoil as the Earl of Desmond is in rebellion and in the north the O’ Neills are moving also against the English.

An army of 3,000 men is sent into the Wicklow Mountains but O’Byrne and Eustace are waiting for them in Glenmalure. Over 800 English lose their lives at the Battle of Glenmalure and the rest flee back to Dublin. The following year the English offer terms, Eustace refuses and flees to Spain but O’Byrne and the other clan chiefs accept the terms and are pardoned.

In the following years, O’Byrne keeps a low profile. He makes no overt moves against the English, instead of holding them at bay and even giving them hostages.

In 1592, Hugh Roe O’Donnell, with brothers Art and Henry MacShane O’Neill, escapes from Dublin Castle. The breakout has been planned with the help of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and the escapees fled to the safety of Glenmalure. It is a severe winter and Art dies from exposure and is buried in O’Byrne land but O’Byrne is able to transport Hugh Roe and Henry away to safety.

In January 1594, the English decide to move against O’Byrne, claiming that he is involved in treason. The Lord Deputy of Ireland Sir William Russell manages to take Ballinacor but O’Byrne and his wife Rose escape.

The English spend a long time collecting heads and plundering, they spare few. In April, Russell again goes hunting for O’Byrne who once again escapes. His wife, however, is captured and sentenced to be burned to death. The sentence is not carried out.

O’Byrne is once again forced to seek terms which he is granted for renewable 3 monthly terms. He stays quiet until September 1596 when his son successfully attacks a munitions transport and is able to overrun the English garrison that had been placed in Ballinacor.

Lord Deputy Russell spends the next year unsuccessfully scouring the country for O’Byrne. However O’ Byrne’s luck eventually runs out. A traitor in his camp gives information to Russell that O’Byrne will be in Ballinacorr on May 8, 1597. The Lord Deputy is able to surprise him and capture him in a cave. There he is hacked to death and decapitated with his own sword.

The head of O’Bryne is put on a spike at Dublin Castle then later sent to London to Queen Elizabeth. Angry that it would be even sent to England, she disdains to accept the head of such a base “Robin Hood.”

(From: “Feagh MacHugh O’Byrne 1543-1597” by Pádraig Mac Donnchadha, YourIrish.com, http://www.yourirish.com | Pictured: The armorial achievements (coat of arms, crest and motto) recorded by the Chief Herald of Ireland and the Ulster King of Arms as being awarded to Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne)


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Death of James Somers, Irish Recipient of the Victoria Cross

Sergeant James Somers VC, an Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces, dies in Turkey on May 7, 1918.

Somers is born in Belturbet, County Cavan, on June 12, 1894.

Somers is 21 years old, and a sergeant in the 1st Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, British Army during World War I when the following deed takes place for which he is awarded the Victoria Cross.

On July 1-2, 1915, in Gallipoli, Turkey, when, owing to hostile bombing, some of his troops had retired from a sap, Sergeant Somers remains alone there until a party brings up bombs. He then climbs over into the Turkish trench and bombs the Turks with great effect. Later on, he advances into the open under heavy fire and holds back the enemy by throwing bombs into their flank until a barricade has been established. During this period, he frequently runs to and from his trenches to obtain fresh supplies of bombs.

In a letter to his father, Somers writes:

“I beat the Turks out of our trench single-handed and had four awful hours at night. The Turks swarmed in from all roads, but I gave them a rough time of it, still holding the trench. It is certain sure we are beating the Turks all right. In the trench I came out of, it was shocking to see the dead. They lay, about three thousand Turks, in front of our trenches, and the smell was absolutely chronic. You know when the sun has been shining on those bodies for three or four days it makes a horrible smell; a person would not mind if it was possible to bury them. But no, you dare not put your nose outside the trench, and if you did, you would be a dead man.”

Somers had previously been severely wounded during the Retreat from Mons in August 1914.

Later in the war, Somers serves with the Royal Army Service Corps on the Western Front. He dies at the age of 24 on May 7, 1918, leaving behind his parents, wife and son. He is buried with full military honours in Modreeny Church of Ireland cemetery. His Union Jack-draped coffin is carried on a gun carriage, led by the Pipe Band of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders. His headstone states simply: “He stood and defended. The Lord wrought a great wonder.”


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Birth of Liam Deasy, Irish Republican Army Officer

Liam Deasy, Irish Republican Army (IRA) officer who fights in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, is born in Kilmacsimon, Bandon, County Cork on May 6, 1896. In the latter conflict, he is second-in-command of the anti-Treaty forces for a period in late 1922 and early 1923. Before the anti-Treaty and pro-Treaty split, he is considered closely associated with Michael Collins.

Deasy is the third among six sons of William Deasy, seaman, and Mary Deasy (née Murray). He is educated locally at Ballinadee before leaving school at the age of thirteen to work in nearby Bandon.

During the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), Deasy is adjutant of the IRA’s 3rd Cork Brigade (West Cork). He serves under Tom Barry in one of the unit’s best known actions, the Crossbarry ambush in March 1921. His younger brother, Pat, dies in action at the Kilmichael ambush in November 1920, an engagement at which Deasy is not present. He also takes part in the Tooreen ambush.

Deasy opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty. In the months that follow he tries to persuade Collins to renegotiate aspects of the treaty, especially to remove an oath to the British king from the constitution of the new Irish Free State. When fighting breaks out in Dublin in June 1922 between pro and anti-Treaty forces, he sides with the Anti-Treaty IRA in the ensuing Irish Civil War. However, he is reluctant to fight his former comrades and voices the opinion that the fighting should have ended with the Free State seizure of the Four Courts.

In late July 1922, Deasy commands 1,500 anti-Treaty fighters who hold a line around Kilmallock south of Limerick city against about 2,000 Free State troops under Eoin O’Duffy. His men are the most experienced IRA fighters of the 1919-21 war and hold their position until August 8, when they are outflanked by seaborne landings on the southern coast. His men then disperse. He goes on the run in the southeast of the country.

In August 1922, Deasy is in command of a band of republican guerrillas in West Cork when they hear that Collins is in the area. Deasy has his men prepare an ambush for Collins’ convoy at Béal na Bláth, should it return by the same route it had taken earlier.

Deasy and most of his men do not take part in the ambush as they had retired to a nearby pub, assuming that they had missed Collins. However, Collins arrives as the last of Deasy’s men are clearing the mine and barricade that had been erected on the road at Béal na Bláth. Collins is killed in the ensuing firefight. Deasy later writes in his memoirs that he profoundly regrets the death of his former commander.

In January 1923, by which time Deasy has become Deputy Chief of Staff of the IRA, he is captured by Free State forces near Clonmel, County Tipperary, and sentenced to death. He is aware that the newly formed government plans on wholesale executions and knows that the IRA will retaliate with reprisals. He decides that it is now time to end the war. He signs a document (written by his captors) ordering the men under his command to surrender themselves and their arms to the government. He is spared execution. On the day that his order is published, Free State authorities demand that the prisoners in a jail in Limerick sign a statement agreeing to unconditional surrender, threatening wholescale executions to those who refused. Some republicans denounce Deasy as a traitor and a coward for this action, but he argues in his book, Brother against Brother, that he was opposed to continuing the civil war anyway and would have called on republicans to surrender whether or not he had been captured.

Deasy takes no further part in politics following the end of the Irish Civil War. In 1924, he sets up a business making weatherproof textiles. On November 24, 1927, he marries Margaret Mary O’Donoghue. They have three daughters together.

During The Emergency, Deasy serves in the Irish Army from 1940 to 1945, reaching the rank of commandant. He later writes two memoirs about his experiences during the revolutionary period: Toward Ireland Free and Brother against Brother, the latter being published after his death.

Deasy dies at St. Anne’s Hospital, Northbrook Road, Dublin, on August 20, 1974. He is buried in Bohernabreena Cemetery in Dublin.


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Death of Robert Lloyd Praeger, Naturalist, Writer & Librarian

Robert Lloyd Praeger, Irish naturalist, writer and librarian, dies at the age of 87 in a Belfast hospital on May 5, 1953.

Praeger is born on August 25, 1865 in Holywood, County Down, in what is now Northern Ireland, the second son among five sons and one daughter of Willem Emilius Praeger, linen merchant, and Maria Praeger (née Patterson). From a Unitarian background, he is raised in Holywood and attends the primary school of the Reverend Charles McAlester and then the nearby Sullivan Upper School, followed by the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He attends what is now Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) from 1882, earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1885 and a Bachelor of Engineering in 1886. While at college he also becomes very active in the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club (BNFC), learning a range of practical naturalist skills. He is elected to the club’s committee in 1885.

Praeger works in the National Library of Ireland in Dublin from 1893 to 1923. He co-founds and edits The Irish Naturalist, and writes papers on the flora and other aspects of the natural history of Ireland. He organises the Lambay Survey in 1905-06 and, from 1909 to 1915, the wider Clare Island Survey. He is an engineer by qualification, a librarian by profession and a naturalist by inclination.

Praeger is awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in 1921. He becomes the first President of both An Taisce and the Irish Mountaineering Club in 1948, and serves as President of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) for 1931–34.

Praeger is instrumental in developing advanced methodologies in Irish botany by inviting Knud Jessen, the acclaimed Danish expert in Glacial and Post-Glacial flora, to undertake research and teaching in Ireland. This leads to the establishment of “paleoecology” as a distinct field of study in Ireland.

A vice-county system is adopted by Praeger, dividing Ireland into forty vice-counties based on the counties. However, the boundaries between them does not always correspond to the administrative boundaries and there are doubts as to the correct interpretation of them.

Praeger dies in a Belfast hospital on May 5, 1953 and is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery, Dublin, together with his wife Hedwig. His younger sister Rosamond Praeger is a sculptor and botanical artist.

(Pictured: Portrait of Robert Lloyd Praeger by Sarah Cecilia Harrison, National Museums Northern Ireland)


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Birth of Mannix Flynn, Politician, Author & Playwright

Gerard Mannix Flynn, an Irish Independent politician, author and playwright, is born in Dublin on May 4, 1957. He is serving as a Dublin City Councillor since May 2009. In addition to his work on Dublin City Council, he has also written the novel Nothing To Say in 1983 and the play James X in 2002.

At the age of eleven, Flynn is sent to St. Joseph’s Industrial School in Letterfrack, County Galway, for eighteen months. He is subjected to sexual and physical abuse there. He also spends time in Marlborough House Detention Centre, Daingean, County Offaly, St. Patrick’s Institution, Dublin, and is given five years at the age of fifteen and sent to Mountjoy Prison.

Flynn publishes the novel Nothing To Say in 1983. It is subsequently translated into German, Italian, and Polish. He founds his arts company, Farcry Productions, in 2004, which produces visual art, performance and installation work around taboo issues such as child sexual abuse, violence, and addiction.

In 2004, James X performed by Flynn wins The Irish Times Irish Theatre Award. An earlier version of this play entitled Talking to the Wall previously wins the Edinburgh Fringe award.

Flynn appears in the films Cal, When the Sky Falls and Excalibur and works as an actor in Scotland, London, Austria, and Dublin for twenty years.

Flynn is first elected to Dublin City Council in the 2009 Irish local elections as an independent candidate representing the South-East Inner City electoral area. He is re-elected to the revised Pembroke-South Dock electoral area in the 2014 Irish local elections.

Flynn tables a motion to move the Temple Bar Cultural Trust, a State company set up in 1991 as a regeneration agency for Temple Bar, under the direct control of Dublin City Council. The trust is subsequently found to be in breach of corporate governance and accountability in a number of public reports. He also expresses critical views of the way public money is spent as part of a Grafton Street regeneration project in Dublin.

Flynn supports tougher regulation around the amplification of busking on public streets, which leads to his office being vandalised in February 2015. He is involved in a number of challenges to cycle lane provision, with a High Court challenge against the Strand Road cycle lane COVID-19 mobility trial and is a spokesperson for a group opposed to this cycle lane trial. Critics accuse him of consistently voting against policies that would provide more active travel infrastructure and in favour of policies which negatively impact pedestrians and cyclists. His legal challenges to cycling provision have the potential to revert a number of cycle lanes which have been created back to servicing predominantly cars.

In 2015, Flynn resigns from the Dublin City Council Arts SPC over what he perceives as a lack of cohesive overall policy, strategy, and vision.

In 2016, Flynn protests against the Artane Band, due to its association with the Artane Industrial School. The band responds saying it has had no association with the former industrial school. His peaceful protest, which includes him protesting on a window sill in his Dublin City Council office, is criticised by some as “attention seeking” and a “publicity stunt full stop.”

In 2019, Flynn is involved in a protest march against plans to open the state’s largest homeless shelter in his ward. Protesters march northbound on Aungier Street blocking traffic and shouting slogans against the Peter McVerry trust for providing the services in conjunction with Dublin City Council. In 2020, he takes further legal action against the council, who are working in conjunction with the Peter McVerry Trust, so that he can ensure the homeless facilities will not be built in the area.

Flynn contests the 2011, 2016 and 2020 Irish general elections to Dáil Éireann unsuccessfully. He stands unsuccessfully as an independent candidate at the 2021 Dublin Bay South by-election, getting 879 first-preference votes (3.3%).

A 2019 documentary by Flynn, Land Without God, about the effects of clerical abuse on Flynn and his family, receives special mention for the Dublin Human Rights Film Award at the Dublin International Film Festival.


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Birth of James Morrison, Irish Fiddler

James Morrison, a notable south Sligo-style Irish fiddler known as “The Professor,” is born on May 3, 1893, near Riverstown, County Sligo, at the townland of Drumfin.

Morrison grows up in a community steeped in traditional Irish culture especially music and at the age of seventeen he is employed by the Gaelic League to tutor the Connacht style of step dancing at the Gaelic League school in County Mayo.

In 1915, at the age of 21, Morrison immigrates to the United States and settles in New York City. In 1918, he wins the fiddle competition at the New York Feis. He becomes associated with other leading Irish musicians such as Michael Coleman and Paddy Killoran, who are also from County Sligo.

Morrison is one of the leading Irish music teachers in New York in the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to the fiddle, he can play the flute, tenor banjo and button accordion, and teaches hundreds of young Irish American students to play traditional music.

The Sligo style of fiddle music Morrison plays is typically highly ornamented and fast, with a fluid bowing style. Recordings of his playing are imported to Ireland in great numbers, and have an extraordinary impact. In many areas, local playing styles fall into disuse because of the popularity of the style and repertoire of Morrison and Michael Coleman. This repertoire includes predominantly reels, rather than jigs and hornpipes, and are often played by Irish musicians in the same order as on the original recordings. According to Séamus Mac Mathúna, “More than thirty years after Coleman’s death … one seldom hears ‘Bonny Kate’ without ‘Jenny’s Chickens.’ ‘Tarbolton’ is inevitably followed by ‘The Longford Collector’ and the ‘Sailor’s Bonnet.'” The great Canadian fiddler Jean Carignan was is influenced by Morrison. Morrison is well regarded by Frankie Gavin: “the approach he had to fiddle playing and the approach he had to any tune he touched just…can’t be beaten…nobody can play like that today.”

Morrison dies on November 11, 1947, and is interred, like many of his great musical contemporaries, in Saint Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx.


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Death of John Gregg, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh

John Allen Fitzgerald Gregg, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh, dies at his home in Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, on May 2, 1961.

Gregg is born on July 4, 1873, at North Cerney, Gloucestershire, England, into a distinguished family, youngest and only son among four children of the Rev. John Robert Gregg, vicar of Deptford, Kent, and Sarah Caroline Frances Gregg (née French), sister of Thomas Valpy French, Bishop of Lahore, India (in Pakistan since 1947). His grandfather, John Gregg, is Bishop of Cork. He is educated at Bedford School, enters Christ’s College, Cambridge, on a foundation scholarship in 1891, and graduates BA in 1894, distinguishing himself in sport and scholarship and winning the Hulsean prize in 1896 for his thesis Decian persecution (1897), taking his MA in 1897, BD in 1909, and DD in 1929. From the University of Dublin he graduates BD ad eundem in 1911 and DD in 1913.

His uncle Robert Gregg, Archbishop of Armagh, welcomes his decision to enter the church, but not his proposal to settle in Ireland, warning him that he will “find it very rough.” Ordained deacon at St. Luke’s Church, Belfast in 1896, he is successively appointed curate at Ballymena, County Antrim in 1896, curate and residentiary preacher at Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral in Cork, County Cork, in 1899, and rector of St Michael’s, Blackrock, Cork from 1906 to 1912. On his appointment as Archbishop King’s professor of divinity at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1911, he moves to Dublin and becomes canon of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1912 to 1915, and examining chaplain to the Archbishop of Dublin from 1913 to 1915, before joining the episcopal bench as Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin from 1915 to 1920.

Though Gregg is instinctively conservative, his awareness of contemporary trends make him responsive to demands for change: he supports the resolution for women to hold parochial office and presents a petition to the General Synod in 1914, signed by 1,400 women. Though the motion is lost, he perseveres undaunted, and a bill for the ecclesiastical enfranchisement of women is finally carried in 1920. A unionist, he is also one of three Anglican and seventeen Catholic bishops to sign the declaration against partition in 1917, which is organised by the Catholic Bishop of Derry, Charles McHugh.

From the 1920s the Irish church is dominated by Gregg, first as Archbishop of Dublin (1920–39) and later as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (1939–59). He provides stability to the church during a turbulent period of political and social change and is outspoken in defence of its interests, pragmatically espousing policies that will lead to the greater integration of the Protestant community into the new Irish state, as in his acceptance of the teaching of compulsory Irish in national schools. Despite a declining Protestant community in the south of Ireland, he maintains the unity of the church, overcoming the political division of the country into two entities. He regrets constitutional change but pledges the loyalty of the church to the Irish Free State. While recognising that the Protestant ethos is different from that of the majority of Irishmen, he maintains that “whatever our religious or political outlook may be, here is our home, and we have a right to be here.” He is elected to the first Irish Free State senate, and is subsequently consulted by Éamon de Valera, who later describes him as “a most learned and kindly gentleman, and . . . a highly valued friend,” in framing the text of the 1937 constitution. In 1949, he adapts, albeit with sadness, the state prayers to fit the republican form of government, observing that “the republic is a fact” and that “in our prayers, above all, there must be reality.”

Gregg is an able administrator, and his courage and integrity in facing difficult situations and his scholarship and devotion to the church earn him respect in the councils of the wider Anglican communion. He is known as “the churchman’s bishop” for his emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy, ecclesiastical discipline, and loyalty to the clergy. Though conservative in his approach to church unity, he seeks closer relations between the Christian churches and frequently visits the reformed churches of the Iberian Peninsula, where a portrait plaque is unveiled in 1950 in St. John’s Church, Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal. A baptistry in St. Paul’s Cathedral, Lisbon, is dedicated to his memory. Well known in England as a writer and preacher, he is appointed select preacher at the University of Cambridge (1916, 1930, 1936) and the University of Oxford (1946, 1947) and supports the institution of annual theological lectures at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). His publications include Epistle of St. Clement of Rome (1899) and The Primitive Faith and Roman Catholic Developments (1909) – a minor classic which is used as a textbook for ordinands of the Church of England. He writes the introduction and notes to the revised version of the Wisdom of Solomon for the Cambridge Bible for Schools (1909) and publishes sermons and articles in religious journals. Elected Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA) in 1914, he is elected to honorary fellowship in 1934 by Christ’s College, Cambridge, is awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity (DD) in 1949 by QUB, and is created Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in 1957.

A commanding figure, tall, thin, with raven-black hair, piercing eyes, and fine features, Gregg has an air of sacerdotal austerity, lightened on occasion by his dry sense of humour. He maintains a well regulated daily timetable and keeps a diary, writing his most personal thoughts in Greek. He makes time for recreation, a daily walk of two miles, tennis, and (from 1929) sailing, and holidays in Ireland and on the Continent. He has a great love of English literature and church music. In 1959, he retires to the Woodhouse, Rostrevor, County Down. Though incapacitated by blindness, deafness, and lameness, he never complains, and according to his wife, his life of prayer is enriched. He dies on May 2, 1961, at his home and is buried in Enniskerry, County Wicklow, beside his first wife and son.

Gregg marries Anna Alicia Jennings on November 26, 1902. They have two sons and two daughters. Anna dies in 1945. On January 22, 1947, he marries secondly Leslie Alexandra, daughter of the Rev. T. J. McEndoo, dean of Armagh, who officiates at the marriage of his daughter and of his archbishop.

(From: “Gregg, John Allen Fitzgerald” by Helen Andrews, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Founding Member of the Dublin United Irishmen

Archibald Hamilton Rowan, a founding member of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen, is born in the home of his grandfather, William Rowan, in London on May 1, 1751.

Hamilton Rowan lives there with his mother and sister for much of his early life. He is admitted to Queens’ College, Cambridge in 1768, but is expelled from the college and rusticated for an attempt to throw a tutor into the River Cam. He is sent for a period in 1769 to Warrington Academy.

Hamilton Rowan travels throughout the 1770s and 1780s, visiting parts of Europe, the Americas, and North Africa. In 1781, he marries Sarah Dawson in Paris, France. The couple has ten children. He is the godfather of the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton.

Hamilton Rowan returns to Ireland in his thirties, in 1784, to live at Rathcoffey near Clane in County Kildare. He becomes a celebrity and, despite his wealth and privilege, a strong advocate for Irish liberty. That same year he joins the Killyleagh Volunteers, a militia group later associated with radical reform. He first gains public attention by championing the cause of fourteen-year-old Mary Neal in 1788. Neal had been lured into a Dublin brothel and then assaulted by Henry Luttrell, 2nd Earl of Carhampton. Hamilton Rowan publicly denounces Luttrell and publishes a pamphlet A Brief Investigation of the Sufferings of John, Anne, and Mary Neal in the same year. An imposing figure at more than six feet tall, his notoriety grows when he enters a Dublin dining club threatening several of Mary Neal’s detractors, with his massive Newfoundland at his side and a shillelagh in hand. The incident wins him public applause and celebrity as a champion of the poor.

In 1790 Hamilton Rowan joins the Northern Whig Club, and by October has become a founding member of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen, working alongside famous radicals such as William Drennan and Theobald Wolfe Tone. He is arrested in 1792 for seditious libel when caught handing out “An Address to the Volunteers of Ireland,” a piece of United Irish propaganda. Unknown to him, from 1791 Dublin Castle has a spy in the Dublin Society, Thomas Collins, whose activity is never discovered. From February 1793, Britain and Ireland join the War of the First Coalition against France, and the United Irish movement is outlawed in 1794.

Hamilton Rowan’s reputation for radicalism and bluster grow during this time when he leaves Ireland to confront the Lord Advocate of Scotland about negative comments made in respect to his character and that of members of the Society of United Irishmen. As a prominent member of the Irish gentry, he is an important figure in the United Irishmen and becomes the contact for the Scottish radical societies as a result of his visit. Upon his return to Dublin, he is charged and is found guilty of seditious libel, even though he is excellently defended by the famous John Philpot Curran. He is sentenced to two years imprisonment, receives a fine of £500, and is forced to pay two assurities for good behaviour of £1,000 each. In January 1794, he retires to his apartments in Dublin’s Newgate Prison.

In the years following, Hamilton Rowan spends time in exile in France, the United States and Germany. He is allowed to return to Ireland in 1806. He returns to the ancestral home of Killyleagh Castle, County Down, receiving a hero’s welcome. While he agrees to be a model citizen under the conditions of his return to Ireland, he remains active in politics and retains his youthful radicalism. Following his last public appearance at a meeting in the Rotunda in Dublin on January 20, 1829, he is lifted up by a mob and paraded through the streets.

Hamilton Rowan dies at the age of 84 in his home on November 1, 1834. He is buried in the vaults of St. Mary’s Church, Dublin.