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Death of William Conway, Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church

William John Cardinal Conway, Irish cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who serves as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland from 1963 until his death, dies in Armagh, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, on April 17, 1977, after a short illness.

Conway is born on January 22, 1913, in Belfast, the eldest of four sons and five daughters of Patrick Joseph Conway and Annie Conway (née Donnelly). His father, a self-employed housepainter, also has a paint shop in Kent Street off Royal Avenue. His mother, who survives her son, is born in Carlingford, County Louth. He attends Boundary Street Primary School, St. Mary’s CBS (now St. Mary’s CBGS Belfast). His academic successes are crowned by a scholarship to Queen’s University Belfast. He decides to study for the diocesan priesthood. In 1933 he is conferred with an honours BA in English literature and goes on to read a distinguished course in theology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

Conway is ordained on June 20, 1937, and awarded a DD (1938). On November 12, 1938, he enters the Pontifical Irish College in Rome, and in 1941 he receives the DCL degree at the Pontifical Gregorian University. When Italy enters World War II in June 1940, he returns to Belfast to take up duty in the Diocese of Down and Connor. He is appointed to teach English and Latin in St. Malachy’s College in Belfast, but after one year he is named professor of moral theology and canon law in Maynooth. He contributes regular ‘Canon law replies’ to the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, which are later collected as Problems in canon law (1950), the only book published by him.

In 1957 Conway becomes vice-president of Maynooth, and in 1958, he is named Ireland’s youngest bishop, Titular Bishop of Neve, and auxiliary bishop to Cardinal John D’Alton, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. He is consecrated in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh on July 27, 1958. He serves as administrator of St. Patrick’s Church, Dundalk, for the next five years, gaining valuable pastoral experience, and also uses these years to familiarise himself with his new diocese, especially its geography. On the death of D’Alton, he is chosen to succeed him in September 1963, and is enthroned on September 25 in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh by the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Sensi. At the end of 1964, Pope Paul VI chooses him as Ireland’s seventh residential cardinal, and he receives the red hat in the public consistory of February 22, 1965.

The thirteen-odd years of Conway’s ministry as primate are dominated firstly by the Second Vatican Council and secondly by the Troubles in Northern Ireland. His primary concern is the church, to steer it through testing times. He is a very active bishop in a diocese of 160,000 Catholics, with fifty-seven parishes and some 167 priests. He carries the burden alone until 1974 when he is given an auxiliary in the person of his secretary, Fr. Francis Lenny (1928–78). Two new parishes are created, five new churches are built, and many others are renovated to meet the requirements of liturgical reform. Twenty new schools are also provided. He attends all four sessions of the Vatican council (1962–65), as auxiliary bishop and as primate. On October 9, 1963, he addresses the assembly, making a plea that the council might not be so concerned with weightier matters as to neglect to speak about priests. He also makes contributions on the topics of mixed marriages, Catholic schools, and the laity. On the topic of education, he is convinced that integrated schools will not solve Northern Ireland’s problems.

Conway represents the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference at each assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome, at first with Bishop Michael Browne of the Diocese of Galway and Kilmacduagh, his former professor in Maynooth, and later with the Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Ryan. With Cardinals Jean-Marie Villot and Pericle Felici, he is chairman of the first synod in 1969, a signal honour conferred on him by Pope Paul VI. He addresses the assembly, opposing the ordination of married men as a move that would release a flood of applications from around the world for dispensations from priestly celibacy. His experience of violence in Northern Ireland is reflected in contributions he makes to later synod assemblies, especially in 1971 and 1974.

Apart from the synod, Conway travels a few times each year to Rome for meetings of the three Roman congregations on which he is called to serve (those of bishops, catholic education, and the evangelisation of peoples) and the commission for the revision of the code of canon law. He also travels further afield in a representative capacity to the International Eucharistic Congress at Bogotá, also attended by Pope Paul VI, and to Madras (1972), where he acts as papal legate for the centenary celebrations in honour of St. Thomas. In 1966 he is invited by the bishops of Poland to join in celebrations for the millennium of Catholicism in that country but is refused an entry visa by the Polish government. In January 1973 he feels obliged to forgo participation in the Melbourne eucharistic congress because of the troubled situation at home. Within Ireland he accepts invitations to become a freeman of Cork and Galway (1965) and of Wexford (1966). In 1976 the National University of Ireland (NUI) confers on him an honorary LL.D.

Conway is acknowledged as an able and diligent chairman of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference. The core problem in the early years is how to lead the Irish church into the difficult new era that follows the council. He shows exceptional leadership qualities in the manner in which he promotes firm but gentle progress, avoiding sudden trauma and divisions. A major event in his term as Archbishop of Armagh, and one that gives him much satisfaction, is the canonization of Oliver Plunkett, his martyred predecessor, in the holy year 1975. He follows with great interest the final stages of the cause from 1968 and is greatly disappointed when grounded by his doctors six weeks before the event. He does however take part, concelebrating with Pope Paul VI at the ceremony on October 12, 1975. He also presides the following evening at the first mass of thanksgiving in the Lateran Basilica, receiving a tumultuous applause from the thousands of Irish present.

More than anything else, the Troubles in Northern Ireland occupy Conway during the second half of his term as archbishop and primate. He is the leading spokesman of the Catholic cause but never fails to condemn atrocities wherever the responsibility lay. He brands as ‘monsters’ the terrorist bombers on both sides. In 1971 he denounces internment without trial, and the following year he is mainly responsible for highlighting the ill-treatment and even torture of prisoners in Northern Ireland. He repudiates the idea that the conflict is religious in nature, emphasising its social and political dimensions, and is openly critical of the British government over conditions in Long Kesh Detention Centre, and of ‘the cloak of almost total silence’ surrounding violence against the Catholic community.

In January 1977 Conway undergoes surgery in a Dublin hospital, and almost immediately comes to know that he is terminally ill. It is the best-kept secret in Ireland until close to the end. On March 29, he writes to his fellow bishops informing them that the prognosis regarding his health is ‘not good, in fact . . . very bad,’ and that he is perfectly reconciled to God’s will. He is still able to work at his desk until Good Friday, April 8, 1977.

Conway dies in Armagh on Low Sunday night, April 17, 1977. Seven countries are represented at his funeral by six cardinals and many bishops. The apostolic nuncio, the bishops of Ireland, the president and Taoiseach, six Irish government ministers, and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland are also among the mourners. The cardinal is laid to rest in St. Patrick’s Cathedral Cemetery, Armagh. The red hat received from Pope Paul VI is suspended from the ceiling of the Lady chapel, joining those of his four immediate predecessors.

(From: “Conway, John William,” Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, contributed by J. J. Hanley)


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Birth of William Beresford, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Tuam

William Beresford, 1st Baron Decies, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Tuam, is born on April 16, 1743.

Beresford is the third surviving son, out of eight daughters and seven sons of Marcus Beresford, 1st Earl of Tyrone, and his wife Catherine Power, 1st Baroness de la Poer, the only daughter and heiress of James Power, 3rd Earl of Tyrone and 3rd Viscount Decies. He enters Trinity College Dublin on December 18, 1759, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1763 and Master of Arts in 1766, before becoming a clergyman.

His birth into the politically influential Beresford family affords him a degree of opportunity, and he is made a vice-regal chaplain in 1766. Brother of George de la Poer Beresford, 1st Marquess of Waterford, he marries Elizabeth Fitzgibbon, sister of John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare, on June 16, 1763. They had three sons and five daughters. These connections, however, do not automatically result in his being promoted to bishop, despite reaching episcopal age in 1773, and he spends several years as a well-beneficed rector of Urney in the Diocese of Derry. The Beresford family complains that he has been overlooked for several episcopal vacancies in the 1770s and it is not until 1780 that he is created Doctor of Divinity and consecrated Bishop of Dromore on April 8, 1780. At Dromore he erects a handsome new episcopal residence. On May 21, 1782, he is transferred to the diocese of Ossory and, as bishop there, takes his seat in the Irish parliament and exercises influence over the ecclesiastical borough of St. Canice.

The death of Primate Richard Robinson in 1794 is the stimulus for a reorganisation within the Church of Ireland hierarchy, and Beresford is one of the candidates rumoured to succeed him. However, his familial ties disadvantage him, because the government does not want to favour one Irish “party” over another. He is instead appointed to the vacant archbishopric of Tuam on October 10, 1794. An influential and senior position within the church, it is worth £5,000 per annum, which is more than Archbishop Charles Agar receives for the archbishopric of Cashel and provides him with extensive patronage.

In the late 1790s Beresford regularly attends parliament, particularly in the crucial session of 1799 as the Acts of Union is debated and shares his brother John’s view that a union is the best means of securing the Protestant interest in Ireland.

In the years following the union Beresford gains a temporal peerage, becoming 1st Baron Decies on December 22, 1812. He is an amiable, kind and loquacious individual, and is patron to artists, including Gilbert Stuart, who produces a portrait of him as Bishop of Ossory. His long years of service within the established church also makes him very wealthy, worth £250,000 at the time of his death.

Beresford dies on September 6, 1819, at Tuam, County Galway, and is succeeded in the barony by his eldest surviving son John on September 8, 1819. His eldest son Marcus had died in 1803. His youngest daughter Louisa, widow of Thomas Hope, marries, by special license, her cousin William Carr Beresford on November 29, 1832. Through Louisa he is a grandfather of British MP and patron of the arts, Henry Thomas Hope.

(From: “Beresford, William” by Martin McElroy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009, revised June 2024)


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Thomas Francis Meagher Publicly Presents the Tricolour National Flag

Waterford native Thomas Francis Meagher presents the tricolour national flag of Ireland to the public for the first time at a meeting of the Young Ireland party in Dublin on April 15, 1848.

The mid-19th-century is a difficult time for the Irish. Under British subjugation, and amidst the vice-grip of the Great Famine, Ireland and its people are in desperate need for optimism, and something to bring the nation together.

News of the recent French Revolution has reached Irish ears and there is a growing belief that the path to independence is an achievable one.

During a trip to Paris with an Irish delegation sent to congratulate the French republicans on their successful revolution, Meagher is inspired to create a design for the Irish tricolour, similar to the French flag, with the help of a small group of French women sympathetic to the Irish cause.

The new flag has green, white and orange stripes – the colours symbolising the unification of two traditions into one nation – Catholics (green) and Protestants (orange). Few realise however, that Meagher’s original flag has the orange stripe closest to the staff, a design now used by Ivory Coast.

As Meagher outlines later, “The white in the centre signifies a lasting truce between Orange and Green and I trust that beneath its folds the hands of Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics may be clasped in generous and heroic brotherhood.”

At a meeting in Waterford on March 7, 1848, Meagher first publicly unveils the flag from a second-floor window of the Wolfe Tone Club as he addresses a gathered crowd on the street below who are present to celebrate another revolution that has just taken place in France.

From March of that year the Irish tricolour appears side-by-side with the French tricolour at meetings held all over the country.

On April 14 and 15, the flag is paraded around the country. Political journalist John Mitchel says at the time, “I hope to see that flag one day waving, as our national banner.”

The flag is nearly forgotten following the Young Irelander’s failed rising later in 1848. The Fenians, the next Irish revolutionary movement, use the traditional green field and golden harp motif for its flags and it is the predominantly used flag for the next sixty years.

During this time, support for Meagher’s design grows, and following the events of the 1916 Easter Rising, it is resurrected by the Irish Volunteers and later by Sinn Féin and is unofficially adopted as the flag of Ireland. With the green stripe closest to the staff, Meagher’s tricolour becomes the official flag of the 26 counties of the Irish Republic.

In 1937, the design achieves constitutional status as the official Irish flag.

Until recently, display of the tricolour flag is illegal in the six occupied counties of Northern Ireland.

(From: “On this day in 1848: Ireland’s new flag is shown to public for first time” by Harry Brent, The Irish Post, http://www.irishpost.com, April 15, 2021)


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Birth of Paddy Coad, Irish Football Player & Manager

Patrick “Paddy” Coad, Irish football player and manager, is born at 100 Lower Yellow Road in Waterford, County Waterford, on April 14, 1920. He plays as a forward for Waterford, Glenavon, Shamrock Rovers and Ireland. Although known, primarily, as a maker of goals, he scores 126 goals in the League of Ireland and a further 41 in the FAI Cup. In 1946–47, he is top goal scorer in the League of Ireland. As a player manager, he also guides Shamrock Rovers to three League of Ireland titles and two FAI Cups, before he returns to Waterford and guides them to their first league title in 1966. He is appointed manager of Limerick in September 1967.

Coad is educated at De La Salle College Waterford and first distinguishes himself as a sportsman playing hurling and table tennis, becoming a Munster champion at the latter sport. He also begins to play football with Corinthians, a local junior club based in the Lower Yellow Road area of Waterford. He is soon spotted by Waterford, making his League of Ireland debut in 1937 at the young age of seventeen. He then moves to the Northern Ireland Football League (NIFL) club Glenavon but returns to Waterford after the start of World War II. He is a member of the Waterford team that finishes as a runner up to Cork United in both the League of Ireland and the FAI Cup. Waterford could have won the league title, but their players refuse to turn up for a play-off game against Cork after a dispute over bonus payments.

Coad signs with Shamrock Rovers in 1942 and on February 8 makes his debut against Brideville in the FAI Cup. During his early seasons with the club, he plays alongside Peter Farrell, Tommy Eglington, Jimmy McAlinden and Tommy Breen. He also helps Rovers win the FAI Cup three times. In November 1949, after the untimely death of Jimmy Dunne, he reluctantly accepts the position of player manager. He brings in many young players, including Liam Tuohy, and the team becomes known as Coad’s Colts. The Colts win 19 trophies between 1954 and 1959. Under his guidance, Rovers win three League of Ireland titles and the FAI Cup twice. In 1957, they also make their debut in the European Cup. Despite losing 9–2 on aggregate to Manchester United, Coad at the age of 37, dominates the away game at Old Trafford. He makes two appearances in the European Cup. On May 2, 1955, he is rewarded with a benefit game against Chelsea F.C. with Rovers winning 3-2.

Coad returns home to manage the Blues in 1960. In the 1965–66 League of Ireland season Waterford wins the Championship for the first time. Coad reflects on his legacy: “To bring the first title to my native Waterford leaves everything else in the shade.”

Between 1946 and 1952, Coad also makes eleven appearances and scored three goals for Ireland. He makes his debut on September 30, 1946, in a 1–0 defeat to England. On March 2, 1947, he scores his first goal for Ireland in a 3–2 win against Spain. During this game he also sets up both of Ireland’s other goals for Davy Walsh. On May 22, 1949, he scores the only goal, a penalty, in a 1–0 win over Portugal. His third goal for Ireland comes on May 30, 1951, in 3–2 away win over Norway. Ireland is 2–0 down until Peter Farrell and Alf Ringstead level the score. Then in the 82nd minute Coad scores from 20 yards to win the game. He plays his last game for Ireland in a 6–0 away defeat against Spain on June 1, 1952.

Coad wins the Texaco Hall of Fame Award in 1981 and the Professional Footballers’ Association of Ireland (PFAI) Merit Award in 1983.

After his professional playing career Coad works for twelve years as a commercial traveler for B. P. Ganley Ltd, a bacon and pork distributor in Waterford. He and his wife, Bud, have two daughters and a son. He is ill for six months prior to his death on March 8, 1992, at his daughter’s home in Waterford.

Coad’s brother, Seamus, plays for Waterford in the late 1960s and manages the team in the 1990s. Seamus’ sons Gary and Nigel Coad continue the family name by lining out for the Blues under their father before both going on to win many trophies locally. Amazingly, both Gary and Nigel become only the third set of second-generation brothers to play together for Waterford, following Paddy and Seamus, the Hales and Fitzgeralds. In 2012, Seamus’ grandson, Conor, becomes the latest Coad to play for Waterford United.

The Shamrock Rovers Player of the Year trophy is named after Paddy Coad.


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Birth of Alexander Mitchell, Engineer & Inventor

Alexander Mitchell, Irish engineer who from 1802 is blind, is born in Dublin on April 13, 1780. He is known as the inventor of the screw-pile lighthouse.

Mitchell’s family moves to Belfast while he is a child. He receives his formal education at Belfast Academy where he excels in mathematics. He begins to notice that his eyesight is failing. By the age of 16 he can no longer read and by the age of 22 he is completely blind.

Undeterred, Mitchell borrows £100 and starts up a successful business making bricks in the Ballymacarrett area of Belfast. This enables him to start building his own houses and he completes approximately twenty in the city. It is during this period that his talent for inventing comes to the fore and he fabricates several machines for use in brickmaking and the building trade.

Mitchell patents the screw pile in 1833, for which he later gains some fame. The screw-pile is used for the erection of lighthouses and other structures on mudbanks and shifting sands, including bridges and piers. His designs and methods are employed all over the world from the Portland, Maine breakwater to bridges in Bombay. Initially it is used for the construction of lighthouses on Maplin Sands in the Thames Estuary in 1838, at Fleetwood Lancashire (UK) Morecambe Bay in 1839 and at Belfast Lough where his lighthouse is finished in July 1844.

In 1848 Mitchell is elected member of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and receives the Telford Medal the following year for a paper on his invention.

In May 1851 Mitchell moves to Cobh to lay the foundation for the Spit Bank Lighthouse. The success of these undertakings leads to the use of his invention on the breakwater at Portland, the viaduct and bridges on the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway and a broad system of Indian telegraphs.

Mitchell becomes friendly with astronomer John Thomas Romney Robinson and mathematician George Boole.

Mitchell dies at Glen Devis near Belfast on June 25, 1868, and is buried in the old Clifton graveyard in Belfast. His wife and daughter predecease him.


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Birth of Dónal McKeown, Roman Catholic Bishop of Derry

Dónal McKeown, Roman Catholic prelate from Northern Ireland who has served as Bishop of Derry since 2014, is born in Belfast on April 12, 1950.

McKeown is one of four children born to James McKeown and his wife Rose (née McMeel), and is baptised in St. Patrick’s Church, Belfast. He is brought up in Randalstown, County Antrim, where he plays Gaelic football and hurling with Kickhams GAC Creggan.

McKeown attends primary school at Mount St. Michael’s Primary School, Randalstown, and secondary school as a boarder at St. MacNissi’s College, Camlough, between 1961 and 1968, completing his O-Levels and A-Levels with special distinctions in Modern Languages. Two of his teachers at St. MacNissi’s College are his future brother bishops, Anthony Farquhar and Patrick Walsh.

McKeown begins studying for the priesthood at St. Malachy’s College, Belfast, in 1968, and obtains a bachelor’s degree with honours in German and Italian from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). He teaches English at a school in Dieburg, Germany, between 1970 and 1971, and subsequently works as Northern Ireland correspondent for the Catholic media company Katholische Nachrichten-Agentur between 1971 and 1973.

McKeown completes a licentiate in sacred theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, between 1973 and 1978, during which he also works for Vatican Radio and as a correspondent for An Saol Mór, an Irish-language programme on RTÉ.

McKeown is ordained to the priesthood on July 3, 1977.

Following ordination, McKeown’s first pastoral assignment is as chaplain at Mater Infirmorum Hospital, before returning to Rome to complete his licentiate. He returns to the Diocese of Down and Connor in 1978, where he is appointed as a teacher at Our Lady and St. Patrick’s College, Knock, while also serving as assistant priest in Derriaghy. He returns to St. MacNissi’s College in 1983, where he continues his involvement with youth ministry and is given responsibility for organising the annual diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes.

McKeown subsequently returns to St. Malachy’s College in 1987, where he teaches and serves as dean of the adjoining seminary, before succeeding Canon Noel Conway as president in 1995. During his presidency, he completes a Master of Business Administration at the University of Leicester in 2000, specialising in educational management.

McKeown has completed the Belfast Marathon on two occasions: as a priest with a team of 48 from Derriaghy in 1982, and as a bishop fundraising for a minibus for St. Malachy’s College in 2001.

McKeown is appointed auxiliary bishop-elect for the Diocese of Down and Connor and titular bishop of Cell Ausaille by Pope John Paul II on February 21, 2001, the first Irish bishop to be appointed in the third millennium. He is consecrated by the Bishop of Down and Connor, Patrick Walsh, on April 29 in St. Peter’s Cathedral, Belfast.

In response to a 2007 decision by Amnesty International to campaign for the legalisation of abortion in certain circumstances, McKeown supports the decision of Catholic schools in the diocese to disband their Amnesty International support groups, on the grounds that it is no longer appropriate to promote the organisation in their schools.

It is reported in an article in The Irish News that the mention of McKeown as a possible successor to Walsh as Bishop of Down and Connor is actively opposed by some priests in the diocese, who regard him as being “too soft” on the issue of integrated education. This opposition is branded a “Stop Donal” campaign.

McKeown also serves as a member of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, with responsibility for the promotion of Catholic education, youth ministry, university chaplaincies and the promotion of vocations. His interests include the interface between faith and the empirical sciences, and working with Catholic schools in Norway, Denmark, Lithuania, Poland and Germany.

McKeown also serves as a member of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference and its committee on education and chairs its committees on vocations and youth. He leads the youth of the diocese to World Youth Day in 2002 and 2005 and also travels to Rome with his brother bishops for their quinquennial visit ad limina in 2006. He is also a regular contributor on Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Ulster.

McKeown is appointed Bishop-elect of Derry by Pope Francis on February 25, 2014. He is installed on April 6 in St. Eugene’s Cathedral, Derry.

Following the appointment of Noël Treanor as Apostolic Nuncio to the European Union on November 26, 2022, McKeown is announced as Apostolic Administrator of Down and Connor on January 21, 2023. He serves in this role until the installation of Alan McGuckian, following his appointment as Bishop of Down and Connor on February 2, 2024.

McKeown starts a 33-day journey of prayer toward the Consecration to Jesus Christ through Mary on January 9, 2025. The prayer takes place online each evening at 7:00 p.m. The 33 days of prayer take place the week following the Baptism of the Lord until the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes on February 11.


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Death of Stephen Moylan, Patriot During the American Revolutionary War

Stephen Moylan, Irish American patriot leader during the American Revolutionary War, dies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 11, 1811. He holds several positions in the Continental Army including Muster-Master General, Secretary and Aide to General George Washington, 2nd Quartermaster General, Commander of The Fourth Continental Light Dragoons and Commander of the Cavalry of the Continental Army.

Moylan is born to a Catholic family in Cork, County Cork, in 1737. His father, John Moylan, is a well-to-do merchant in Shandon, County Cork. His older brother Francis becomes Bishop of Cork. His family sends him to be educated in Paris. He then works in Lisbon for three years in the family shipping firm. He settles in Philadelphia in 1768 to organize his own firm. He is one of the organizers of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, an Irish American fraternal organization, and serves as its first president.

Moylan joins the American Continental Army in 1775 and upon the recommendation of John Dickinson, is appointed Muster-Master General on August 11, 1775. His brother John acts as United States Clothier General during the war. His experience in the shipping industry affords the United States a well-qualified ship outfitter, who helps fit out the first ships of the Continental Navy. On March 5, 1776, he becomes secretary to General George Washington with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He is appointed Quartermaster General in the American Continental Army on June 5, 1776, succeeding Thomas Mifflin. He resigns from this office on September 28, 1776. However, he continues to serve as a volunteer of General Washington’s staff through December 1776.

In January 1776, Moylan writes a letter using the term “United States of America,” the earliest known use of that phrase.

Moylan then raises a troop of light dragoons, the 4th Continental Light Dragoons, also known as Moylan’s Horse, on January 3, 1777, at Philadelphia, and is appointed colonel in the Continental Army on January 5. The regiment is be noted for taking the field in captured British red coats. However, they see action in green coats at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, and the Battle of Germantown on October 4, 1777, and end the year by protecting the Cantonment at Valley Forge. He succeeds General Casimir Pulaski as Commander of the Cavalry in March 1778. Moylan’s Horse sees action at the Battle of Monmouth on June 28, 1778.

In the campaign of 1779 Moylan and the 4th Dragoons are stationed at Pound Ridge, New York, and see action when the British raid Norwalk, Connecticut, on July 11, 1779. He and the 4th Dragoons take part in the Battle of Springfield in New Jersey, on June 23, 1780, and General Anthony Wayne‘s expedition at Bull’s Ferry, New Jersey, on July 20, 1780. He commands his Dragoons at the Siege of Yorktown in October 1781, after which he is to take the cavalry to the Southern Campaign. However, his failing health causes him to leave the field and return to Philadelphia, where he constantly appeals to the Continental Congress to man, equip and maintain the Continental Dragoon Regiments.

Moylan is rewarded for his service by being breveted to brigadier general on November 3, 1783.

Moylan is married to Mary Ricketts Van Horne on September 12, 1778, and has two daughters, Elizabeth Catherine, and Maria. His two sons die as children. He dies in Philadelphia on April 11, 1811, and is buried there in the churchyard at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church.


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Birth of Abraham Brewster, Judge & Lord Chancellor of Ireland

Abraham Brewster PC (Ire), Irish judge and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, is born in Ballymutra House in Ballynultagh Townland, County Wicklow, on April 10, 1796.

Brewster is the son of William Bagenal Brewster, of Ballinulta, County Wicklow, by his wife Mary, daughter of Thomas Bates. He receives his earlier education at Kilkenny College, then proceeds to Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1812, taking his B.A. degree in 1817, and long after, in 1847, his M.A. degree.

Brewster is called to the Irish bar in 1819, and, having chosen Leinster for his circuit, soon acquires the reputation of a sound lawyer and a powerful speaker. Lord Plunket honours him with a silk gown on July 13, 1835. Notwithstanding the opposition of Daniel O’Connell, who dislikes him, he is appointed Law Adviser to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on October 10, 1841, and is Solicitor-General for Ireland from February 2, 1846, until July 16. By the influence of his friend Sir James Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty, he is Attorney-General for Ireland and privy councilor from January 10, 1853, until the fall of the Aberdeen ministry on February 10, 1855.[1]

In 1854, Brewster is appointed to the Royal Commission for Consolidating the Statute Law, a royal commission to consolidate existing statutes and enactments of English law.

Brewster is very active in almost all branches of his profession after his resignation, and his reputation as an advocate may be gathered from the pages of the Irish Law and Equity Reports, and in the later series of the Irish Common Law Reports, the Irish Chancery Reports, and the Irish Jurist, in all of which his name very frequently appears. Among the most important cases in which he takes part are the Mountgarrett case in 1854, involving a peerage and an estate of £10,000 a year, the Carden abduction case in July of the same year, the Yelverton case in 1861, the Egmont will case in 1863, the Marquess of Donegall‘s ejectment action and lastly, the great will cause of Fitzgerald v. Fitzgerald, in which Brewster’s statement for the plaintiff is said to be one of his most successful efforts.

On Edward Smith-Stanley becoming prime minister, Brewster succeeds Francis Blackburne as Lord Justice of Appeal in Ireland in July 1866, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland the following March. As Lord Chancellor, he sits in his court for the last time on December 17, 1868, when Benjamin Disraeli‘s government resigns. He then retires from public life.

There are only three or four judgments delivered by him in print, either in the Court of Appeal or the Court of Chancery (Ireland). His judicial manner is quiet, but with what is called “a touch of serviceable fierceness” which keeps order in Court. He is highly regarded by his colleagues. Even the bitter-tongued Jonathan Christian, who despises most of his fellow judges, defers to Brewster.

Brewster dies at his residence, 26 Merrion Square South, Dublin, on July 26, 1874, and is buried in the family vault at Tullow, County Carlow, on July 30. By his marriage in 1819 with Mary Ann, daughter of Robert Gray of Upton House, County Carlow, who dies in Dublin on November 24, 1862, he has issue one son, Colonel William Bagenal Brewster, and one daughter, Elizabeth Mary, wife of Mr. Henry French, both of whom die in the lifetime of their father. His estates are inherited by Elizabeth’s son, Robert French-Brewster, who adopts his grandfather’s surname. A nephew, Edward Brewster, studies under Abraham Brewster and becomes a lawyer and politician in New South Wales. Edward’s brother, John Grey Brewster, also emigrates to Australia, where he becomes a prosperous grazier and company director, retiring to England in later years where he dies in 1897.

(Pictured: Right Honourable Abraham Brewster photographed by Thomas Cranfield, 1861)


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Death of Leslie Mary de Barra, Irish Nationalist & Republican

Leslie Mary de Barra (née Price), Irish nationalist and republican active during the Easter Rising of 1916, the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, dies in Cork, County Cork, on April 9, 1984. She becomes Director of Cumann na mBan and goes on to be chairman and President of the Irish Red Cross.

She is born Leslie Mary Price in Dublin on January 9, 1893, to Michael and Mary Price. Her father is a blacksmith, and she is one of six children. She wants to be a teacher and by 1911 has become a Monitress, a common way for girls to get into the teaching profession. Two of her brothers are involved in the Irish Volunteers and she is a member of Cumann na mBan. In advance of the Easter Rising, with the confusion over orders and lack of information, she states that she “did not question anything” as, with all that was happening, there are often odd events in her house. But they all wait for the mobilisation orders for the Rising.

De Barra’s role during the republican rebellion in Ireland, Easter 1916, is to act as a courier carrying messages and ammunition between the main headquarters in the General Post Office (GPO) and other posts. She does her role well during the Rising and gains the respect of many Irish Republicans. On the orders of Seán Mac Diarmada, one of the principal leaders of the rising, she and fellow Cumann na mBan member Bríd Dixon are promoted in the field and treated as officers. She later admits that the job was stressful. She is stationed both in the GPO and in the Hibernian Bank. It is while she is in the bank that she comes closest to death, standing beside Captain Thomas Weafer while he is shot. Another soldier who goes to his aid is also shot. She barely has time to grab Captain Weafer before he dies. She is the person sent to fetch a priest for the dying and wounded soldiers on the Thursday. By Friday evening, she is in the GPO and is with the group evacuated with Louise Gavan Duffy. Once they reach the hospital on Jervis Street, she parts company from Duffy and heads to Jacob’s factory to see how the rebels are getting on there. She is also arrested and held in Broadstone Station but quickly released.

By 1918, de Barra represents West Cork in the Cumann na mBan convention and becomes a member of the executive committee. She leaves her teaching career to focus fully on the organisation required by the republican movement in 1918. She travels the country by train and by bicycle to get women to join the local branches of the Cumann and take part in the activities needed by the movement. She is tasked by the Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) General Headquarters to set up specific lines of communication between Dublin and the Provincial commands. Within the year the organisation has grown from 17 to over 600 branches. She is Director of the organisation during the period up to the end of the war.

De Barra marries Tom Barry on August 22, 1921, in Cork during the Truce period in the lead up to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. At the wedding are men who later end up on opposite sides. Both Éamon de Valera and Michael Collins are guests. Her husband is staunchly Anti-Treaty even though he has been friends with Collins. Although her husband is a staunch republican and a major figure in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, while she is serving in the GPO in Dublin during the rising, he is in Mesopotamia serving in the British Army in World War I.

In later years de Barra is central to the Irish Red Cross. Initially she gets involved by organising the care of children orphaned by World War II. She represents the Irish Red Cross at conferences in Toronto, Oslo, Monaco, New Delhi, Geneva, Vienna, The Hague, Athens, Istanbul and Prague. She and her husband handle refugees from Czechoslovakia and Poland. Through the Red Cross she is able to ascertain the status of Irish held by the Spanish during the Spanish Civil War, as officially Ireland remains neutral and cannot get involved. She is Chairman of the Irish Red Cross from 1950 to 1973.

De Barra is instrumental in the setting up of the Voluntary Health Insurance organisation in the late 1950s. In 1962, with the Red Cross she launches the “Freedom from hunger” campaign in Ireland which later becomes the organisation Gorta. She serves as chairman of Gorta also.

In 1956, a memorial to 1916 is unveiled in Limerick. It is designed by Albert Power and the commemoration of the Rising is held in May 1956 and the monument is unveiled by de Barra. In 1963 she is awarded an honorary degree from University College Dublin (UCD) along with Éamon de Valera and others.

In 1971, de Barra is part of a series to look back on the events leading to Irish Independence and her story is broadcast by Raidió Teilifís Eireann. In 1979 she wins the Henry Dunant Medal which is the highest award of the Red Cross Movement.

De Barra and her husband live on St. Patrick’s Street in Cork from the 1940s until his death in 1980. She dies in Cork on April 9, 1984, and is buried with her husband in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery. She is remembered today in the Leslie Bean de Barra Trophy awarded for the Cork Area Carer of the Year.


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Paul Muldoon Wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Irish poet Paul Muldoon wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on April 8, 2003, for his work Moy Sand and Gravel (2002). Additionally, he has published more than thirty collections and won the T. S. Eliot Prize. At Princeton University he has been both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities and Founding Chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts. He holds the post of Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford from 1999 to 2004 and has also served as president of The Poetry Society (UK) and poetry editor at The New Yorker.

Muldoon, the eldest of three children, is born on June 20, 1951, on a farm in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, outside The Moy, near the boundary with County Tyrone. His father works as a farmer (among other jobs) and his mother is a school mistress. In 2001, Muldoon says of the Moy:

“It’s a beautiful part of the world. It’s still the place that’s ‘burned into the retina,’ and although I haven’t been back there since I left for university 30 years ago, it’s the place I consider to be my home. We were a fairly non-political household; my parents were nationalists, of course, but it was not something, as I recall, that was a major area of discussion. But there were patrols; an army presence; movements of troops; and a sectarian divide. And that particular area was a nationalist enclave, while next door was the parish where the Orange Order was founded; we’d hear the drums on summer evenings. But I think my mother, in particular, may have tried to shelter us from it all. Besides, we didn’t really socialise a great deal. We were ‘blow-ins’ – arrivistes – new to the area, and didn’t have a lot of connections.”

Talking of his home life, Muldoon continues, “I’m astonished to think that, apart from some Catholic Truth Society pamphlets, some books on saints, there were, essentially, no books in the house, except one set, the Junior World Encyclopedia, which I certainly read again and again. People would say, I suppose that it might account for my interest in a wide range of arcane bits of information. At some level, I was self-educated.” He is a “Troubles poet” from the beginning.

In 1969, Muldoon reads English at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), where he meets Seamus Heaney and becomes close to the Belfast Group of poets which include Michael Longley, Ciaran Carson, Medbh McGuckian and Frank Ormsby. He says of the experience, “I think it was fairly significant, certainly to me. It was exciting. But then I was 19, 20 years old, and at university, so everything was exciting, really.” He is not a strong student at QUB. He recalls, “I had stopped. Really, I should have dropped out. I’d basically lost interest halfway through. Not because there weren’t great people teaching me, but I’d stopped going to lectures, and rather than doing the decent thing, I just hung around.” During his time at QUB, his first collection New Weather (1973) is published by Faber & Faber. He meets his first wife, fellow student Anne-Marie Conway, and they are married after their graduation in 1973. The marriage breaks up in 1977.

For thirteen years (1973–86), Muldoon works as an arts producer for the BBC in Belfast. In this time, which sees the most bitter period of the Troubles, he published the collections Why Brownlee Left (1980) and Quoof (1983). After leaving the BBC, he teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and at Gonville and Caius College and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where his students include Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) and Giles Foden (The Last King of Scotland). In 1987, he emigrates to the United States, where he teaches in the creative writing program at Princeton University. He is Professor of Poetry at Oxford University for the five-year term 1999–2004, and is an Honorary Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford.

Muldoon has been awarded fellowships in the Royal Society of Literature and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the 1994 T. S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 The Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry, and the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry. He is also shortlisted for the 2007 Poetry Now Award. His poems have been collected into four books: Selected Poems 1968–1986 (1986), New Selected Poems: 1968–1994 (1996), Poems 1968–1998 (2001) and Selected Poems 1968–2014 (2016). In September 2007, he is hired as poetry editor of The New Yorker.

Muldoon is married to novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz, whom he meets at an Arvon Foundation writing course. He has two children, Dorothy and Asher, and lives primarily in New York City.

(Pictured: Paul Muldoon in Tepoztlán, Morelos, Mexico, 2018. Photograph by Alejandro Arras.)