Lennox is the daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond, an illegitimate grandson of King Charles II, and Lady Sarah Cadogan. She is renowned for her beauty, vivacity, and intellectual curiosity, and is considered the most attractive and socially adept of the Lennox sisters. She is presented at court at the age of thirteen and becomes engaged to James FitzGerald, 20th Earl of Kildare, in 1745.
James FitzGerald becomes Marquess of Kildare and then Duke of Leinster in recognition of his political influence. The couple’s financial arrangements are generous, leaving FitzGerald a substantial jointure and properties, which later strains the resources of her surviving children.
After the Duke of Leinster’s death in 1773, FitzGerald marries her children’s tutor, William Ogilvie, on August 26, 1774, having already begun an affair. Ogilvie is nine years her junior and the likely biological father of her youngest son from her first marriage. She and Ogilvie have three additional children together, two of whom survive into adulthood. She spends time in France and Ireland before eventually settling in London to oversee her daughters’ marriages and engage in social affairs.
FitzGerald is a keen reader, politicized, and culturally active. She has a strong interest in literature, politics, and Enlightenment ideas, influenced by thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau. She actively manages her estates and interiors, notably Carton House and its gardens, and pursues educational and outdoor activities for her children, demonstrating innovation in child-rearing and estate management.
FitzGerald is deeply affectionate and attentive to her children, particularly Lord Edward FitzGerald, a key figure in the Irish republican movement. She is involved in mourning and supporting her children, enduring the deaths of fourteen of her 22 children across both marriages. She also navigates complex social and financial challenges, ensuring her families’ estates and alliances endure despite societal pressures.
FitzGerald’s life and correspondence exemplify the culture, politics, and familial dynamics of eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish aristocracy. She has been depicted in numerous portraits by artists including Sir Joshua Reynolds, Allan Ramsay (pictured above), and Arthur Devis. Her story, and that of the Lennox sisters, is popularized in Stella Tillyard’s 1994 book Aristocrats and the six-part BBC/PBS television series adapted in 1999, highlighting her role in history, society, and culture.
In summary, Emily FitzGerald, Duchess of Leinster, is remembered as a central figure of aristocratic Ireland and Britain, a mother to a large and influential family, and a socially and politically engaged noblewoman whose life bridged familial devotion, political awareness, and cultural sophistication.
King Richard II of England lands at Waterford, County Waterford, on October 2, 1394, at the head of the largest English military force ever to enter an Irish port. This marks the beginning of his first major expedition to Ireland, a campaign aimed at reasserting royal authority and implementing sweeping administrative reforms.
By 1394, England has secured peace with both France and Scotland, allowing Richard to focus on Ireland. The Lordship of Ireland is in decline, with Gaelic lords like Art Óg Mac Murchadha Caomhánach of Leinster resisting English overlordship. Richard’s stated goal is to secure the submission of the great Gaelic lords and to integrate them into the English legal and political system, making them equal subjects of the Crown.
Richard arrives with an army of about 8,000–9,000 men, a force far larger than any previous English intervention in Ireland since the late twelfth century. The campaign is both military and political: while he seeks to subdue resistance, his primary aim is reform of the Irish administration rather than total conquest.
The expedition moves through lower Leinster, encountering resistance from Mac Murchadha Caomhánach. Historical accounts note a dramatic near-capture of the king’s enemies at a place called Laveroc, where the Earl Marshal almost seizes Mac Murchadha Caomhánach and his wife in their beds. Despite these skirmishes, Richard manages to reconcile most of the major Gaelic lords to his overlordship by promising access to royal justice and arbitration.
Richard’s 1394–95 Irish campaign is the first visit by a reigning English monarch to Ireland since King John in 1210. It demonstrates the king’s ambition to centralize control over the entire lordship, but it also highlights the limits of English power in the face of Gaelic resistance and administrative challenges.
In summary, Richard II’s arrival in Waterford on October 2, 1394, is a pivotal moment in medieval Irish history — a show of royal might, a test of political reform, and a reminder of the enduring challenges of governing a diverse and resistant Ireland.
McCarthy’s early career was meteoric: his first book, An outline of Irish history from the earliest times, appears in 1883 and is a fast-moving, strongly worded, nationalist sketch of Irish history. This is followed by a heavy-handed dramatic poem, Serapion (1883), about the early Christian era. In June of the following year he is returned as the Home Rule LeagueMP for Athlone on the death of the sitting member, and also publishes, to excellent reviews, England under Gladstone, which runs to a second edition within a year. In November 1884, his first play, The Candidate, is an overnight success in the Criterion Theatre in London. Its plot is thin but the humour and political badinage ensures it a long run.
At the 1885 United Kingdom general election McCarthy is elected nationalist MP for Newry, and he holds this seat until 1892. In the two years after his election he writes a number of novels, translates works from Persian, and writes Ireland Since the Union (1887), which is well researched, nationalist and impassioned in tone, showing a flair for biographical sketches. During this period he is known for his good attendance in the House of Commons though he does not speak much – throughout his life he is more an observer than a participator – and he is said by William O’Brien to conceal “under the gentlest of exteriors the fire of the ‘Spirit of the Nation’ ballad” (New Ireland Review, 523). In London he is well known for his controversial drama reviews in The Gentleman’s Magazine and the Sunday Sun, and in Dublin for his numerous verse and prose contributions to United Ireland. Although he makes a name for himself as a brilliant young man, he never fulfills his early promise.
In later years McCarthy continues to publish prolifically but produces only ephemeral works, and his parliamentary attendance slackens off. His political commitment is soured possibly by the party’s split in 1890. He originally sides with Charles Stewart Parnell, emphasizing in a speech on December 1, 1890, that he believes in the old-fashioned theory of personal loyalty to a leader. However, five days later he causes a minor drama by rising at the last minute to follow his father and the forty-three other anti-Parnellites, claiming that he feels he must abide by the decision of the majority. Two years later he leaves politics for good without standing in the 1892 United Kingdom general election. A sympathetic profile of him in the New Ireland Review in 1894 remarks that “no man of equal talents made so slight an impression on the political world.”
Thereafter McCarthy has less involvement in Irish affairs and writes no more Irish history books, though his novels continue to have Irish themes. He lives in London in Putney Common, and continues to travel widely. In 1894, he marries in some haste a popular comic actress, Cecilia Loftus, and the event is widely reported in the English press. However, the marriage is dissolved in the United States five years later. In 1908, his second marriage is to Loullie, daughter of Henry Killick of Budapest. He continues to enjoy success as a dramatist and has five plays, four sketches, and three duologues performed in London in the 1890s. However, he concentrates increasingly on historical fiction, which he produces at breakneck speed. In the first decade of the twentieth century he writes over twelve novels based on periods in English, Italian, French, and Irish history. The Illustrious O’Hagan (1906), The O’Flynn (1910), and The King Over the Water (1911) pointedly contradict English stereotypes of the “stage Irishman.” The Fair Irish Maid (1911) is an allegory of the Irish Parliamentary Party‘s political marriage to the ordinary Irish people rather than to the Anglo-Irishascendancy.
McCarthy dies at home in Putney on March 20, 1936 aged 79, although his obituaries all put his age at 75.
(From: “McCarthy, Justin Huntly” by Bridget Hourican, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Reed is the son of John Reed of Galway and Mary Adamson of County Meath. He is educated at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) and called to the Bar in 1873. He enters the Royal Irish Constabulary and is appointed District Inspector in 1859; becoming Inspector-General in 1885. He retires 1900.
Aside from being the only RIC cadet officer to be promoted to Inspector General, Reed changes the rules for promotion in the Royal Irish Constabulary. Up until his tenure, Catholics had little success in attaining promotions. Even though most of the force is Catholic, almost all the officers are non-Catholic. He institutes a rule that each year, sixty men who are Catholic and pass the Sergeant’s exam will be promoted.
Reed is appointed a Knight Bachelor in 1889, a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1892, a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in 1900 and a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in 1897.
Reed dies in Dublin on November 7, 1914, and is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery. His epitaph reads: – “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” (3 John 4.)
By 1947, de Valera’s government has begun drafting legislation to repeal the Act. Initially, the bill does not mention a republic, but by January 1948 it includes a reference to the state as a republic. Costello, as Taoiseach, introduces the bill in November 1948, citing irritation over the British invitation to King George VI to open the Canadian Parliament — seen as a slight to Irish sovereignty.
On September 7, 1948, Costello tells reporters in Ottawa that Ireland will repeal the External Relations Act, thereby ending the Crown’s role in Irish external affairs. The British government is not informed until a month later, and relations remain cordial until Ireland formally leaves the Commonwealth in April 1949.
The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 is passed by the Oireachtas in December 1948 and signed by PresidentSeán T. O’Kelly on December 21, 1948. It repeals the External Relations Act 1936, declares the state’s description as the Republic of Ireland and vests executive power in the President for external relations on the advice of the Government. The Act takes effect on April 18, 1949 (Easter Monday), marking the symbolic completion of Ireland’s transition from dominion to republic.
The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the Ireland Act 1949, acknowledging Ireland’s new status, preserving Northern Ireland’s constitutional position, and maintaining rights of Irish citizens in Britain. This ensures continuity in trade, travel, and citizenship without major disruption.
The significance of the 1948–1949 process is a definitive assertion of Irish sovereignty, aligning Ireland’s legal framework with its de facto republican governance. It ends the last constitutional vestige of the British monarchy in Ireland and marks Ireland’s formal departure from the Commonwealth.
Cromwell’s death is the result of a painful urinary tract infection that leads to blood poisoning. He has been in declining health for some time, and his final days are marked by illness and discomfort. His death comes just over nine years after the Siege of Drogheda in Ireland, which begins in August 1649 and becomes one of the most infamous episodes of his military career.
The Siege of Drogheda, in which Cromwell’s forces execute thousands of Irish defenders, remains a major point of controversy in his legacy. His death in 1658 is met with celebration by many in England, as it paves the way for the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660. After his death, his body is exhumed in 1661 and publicly hanged in chains before being thrown into a pit to ensure he is dead.
Cromwell is remembered as a decisive military leader who helps restore England’s status as a leading European power, but also as a controversial figure whose actions in Ireland leave a lasting scar on Anglo-Irish relations. His death on September 3, 1658, thus marks both the end of his political and military influence and a turning point in the post-Civil War period in Britain.
The Irish Reform Association is established in the early 20th century, a time when Ireland is under British rule and political reform movements are gaining momentum. Lord Dunraven, known for his role in the 1902 Land Conference and his advocacy for Irish interests, seeks to promote reformist policies that will address land tenure, political representation, and constitutional rights for Ireland.
The association aims to support legislative reforms benefiting Irish tenants and landowners, encourage greater political participation and representation for Irish voices in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and counterbalance more radical nationalist or unionist positions with a moderate, reformist platform.
Lord Dunraven has a long career in British politics, serving as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies under Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, in the 1880s and later as a Senator of the Irish Free State from 1922 to 1926. His background as a journalist, soldier, and sportsman give him a broad public profile, and his formation of the Irish Reform Association reflects his interest in bridging political divides and advancing pragmatic reform.
While the Irish Reform Association does not achieve the same long-term prominence as other reform movements, its creation marks Lord Dunraven’s active role in shaping Irish political discourse at a critical juncture. It aligns with his broader efforts to influence Irish policy through both legislative engagement and public advocacy.
In summary, the founding of the Irish Reform Association on August 26, 1904, is a deliberate political move by Lord Dunraven to advance reformist causes in Ireland, reflecting his commitment to balanced, constructive change within the constitutional framework of the time.
Foster serves as Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland three times — in 1784–1785, 1804–1806, and 1807–1811 — and is the last Speaker of the Irish House of Commons from 1785 until the Acts of Union 1800. He is a prominent figure in Irish politics, representing County Louth for most of his career, and is known for his opposition to the Union, which he sees as politically and personally damaging.
Foster’s tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Speaker is marked by significant financial legislation, including measures that transform Ireland’s agricultural economy by promoting arable farming over pasture. His refusal to surrender the Speaker’s mace after the Union becomes a symbolic act of resistance.
Foster dies on August 23, 1828, leaving behind a legacy as one of the most influential Anglo-Irish statesmen of his era.
(Pictured: The Right Honorable John Foster by Gilbert Stuart, c. 1790-1791 – Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)
On May 28, 1914, Childers and Figgis travel to Hamburg, Germany, to buy 1,500 Mauser rifles and 49,000 rounds from arms dealer Moritz Magnus, Jr. The rifles, though obsolete, are still serviceable and fire a high-caliber round. To transport them, Childers offers his yacht Asgard to carry 900 rifles, while Conor O’Brien takes the rest on the Kelpie.
The Asgard, a 50-foot gaff ketch built by Colin Archer, leaves Conwy, North Wales, on July 3. The outward journey is uneventful, but the return is stormy, with the rifles filling the cabin and crew sleeping on them. On July 12, the yacht meets the German tug Gladiator at the mouth of the Scheldt, loading the arms.
On July 26, the Asgard reaches Howth. The unloading in daylight draws a crowd, prompting police and military intervention. A riot erupts, and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers are ambushed at Bachelor’s Walk, resulting in the Bachelor’s Walk massacre — four civilians killed and at least 38 wounded. Despite the violence, the guns are secured.
The Howth gun-running is the first major military operation in Ireland’s 20th-century independence movement. The rifles are later used in the Easter Rising of 1916, including at the General Post Office. The event underscores the role of Anglo-Irish republicans in arming the Volunteers and foreshadows the armed struggle that follows.
In short, July 26, 1914, marks the arrival of a critical arms shipment in Howth, a bold act of defiance against British control and a direct response to Ulster’s gun-running, with lasting consequences for Irish history.
(Pictured: Erskine Childers at Asgard’s wheel on her 1914 gun-running voyage)
Charles is the eldest surviving son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria of France. His early years are unremarkable, but before he is twenty his conventional education has been completely overshadowed by the harsh lessons of defeat in the English Civil War against the Puritans and subsequent isolation and poverty. Thus he emerges into precocious maturity, cynical, self-indulgent, skilled in the sort of moral evasions that make life comfortable even in adversity.
Though the early years of tawdry dissipation tarnish the romance of Charles’s adventures, not all his actions are discreditable. He tries to fight his father’s battles in the west of England in 1645. He resists the attempts of his mother and his sister Henrietta Anne to convert him to Catholicism and remains openly loyal to his Protestant faith. In 1648, he makes strenuous efforts to save his father, and when, after Charles I’s execution in 1649, he is proclaimed Charles II by the Scots in defiance of the English republic. He is prepared to go to Scotland and swallow the stringently anti-Catholic and anti-Anglican Presbyterian Covenant as the price for alliance. But the sacrifice of friends and principles was futile and leaves him deeply embittered. The Scottish army is routed by the English under Oliver Cromwell at Dunbar in September 1650, and in 1651 Charles’s invasion of England ends in defeat at Worcester. The young king becomes a fugitive, hunted through England for forty days but protected by a handful of his loyal subjects until he escapes to France in October 1651.
Charles’s safety is comfortless, however. He is destitute and friendless, unable to bring pressure against an increasingly powerful England. France and the Dutch Republic are closed to him by Cromwell’s diplomacy, and he turns to Spain, with whom he concludes a treaty in April 1656. He persuades his brother James to relinquish his command in the French army and gives him some regiments of Anglo-Irish troops in Spanish service, but poverty dooms this nucleus of a royalist army to impotence. European princes take little interest in Charles and his cause, and his proffers of marriage are declined. Even Cromwell’s death does little to improve his prospects. But George Monck, one of Cromwell’s leading generals, realized that under Cromwell’s successors the country is in danger of being torn apart and with his formidable army creates the situation favourable to Charles’s restoration in 1660.
Most Englishmen now favour a return to a stable and legitimate monarchy, and, although more is known of Charles II’s vices than his virtues, he has, under the steadying influence of Edward Hyde, his chief adviser, avoided any damaging compromise of his religion or constitutional principles. With Hyde’s help, Charles issues in April 1660 his Declaration of Breda, expressing his personal desire for a general amnesty, liberty of conscience, an equitable settlement of land disputes, and full payment of arrears to the army. The actual terms are left to a free parliament, and on this provisional basis Charles is proclaimed king in May 1660. Landing at Dover on May 25, he reaches a rejoicing London on his 30th birthday.
The unconditional nature of the settlement that takes shape between 1660 and 1662 owes little to Charles’s intervention and likely exceeds his expectations. He is bound by the concessions made by his father in 1640 and 1641, but the Parliament elected in 1661 is determined on an uncompromising Anglican and royalist settlement. The Militia Act of 1661 gives Charles unprecedented authority to maintain a standing army, and the Corporation Act 1661 allows him to purge the boroughs of dissident officials. Other legislation places strict limits on the press and on public assembly, and the Act of Uniformity 1662 creates controls of education. An exclusive body of Anglican clergy and a well-armed landed gentry are the principal beneficiaries of Charles II’s restoration.
But within this narrow structure of upper-class loyalism there are irksome limitations on Charles’s independence. His efforts to extend religious toleration to his Nonconformist and Roman Catholic subjects are sharply rebuffed in 1663, and throughout his reign the House of Commons thwarts the more generous impulses of his religious policy. A more pervasive and damaging limitation is on his financial independence. Although the Parliament votes the king an estimated annual income of £1,200,000, Charles has to wait many years before his revenues produce such a sum, and by then the damage of debt and discredit is irreparable. He is incapable of thrift and finds it painful to refuse petitioners. With the expensive disasters of the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665–67 the reputation of the restored king sinks to its lowest level. His vigorous attempts to save London during the Great Fire of September 1666 cannot make up for the negligence and maladministration that leads to England’s naval defeat in June 1667.
Charles clears himself by dismissing his old adviser, Edward Hyde, and tries to assert himself through a more adventurous foreign policy. So far, his reign has made only modest contributions to England’s commercial advancement. The Navigation Acts of 1660 and 1663, which are prompted by the threat to British shipping by the rise of the Dutch carrying trade, are valuable extensions of Cromwellian policies, and the capture of New York in 1664 is one of his few gains from the Dutch. Although marriage to Princess Catherine of Braganza of Portugal in 1662 brings him the possession of Tangier and Bombay, they are of less strategic value than Dunkirk, which he sells to Louis XIV in 1662. He Is, however, prepared to sacrifice much for the alliance of his young cousin. Through his sister Henrietta Anne, Duchess of Orléans, he has direct contact with the French court, and it is through her that he negotiates the startling reversal of the Protestant Triple Alliance (England, the Dutch Republic, Sweden) of 1668. By the terms of the so-called Secret Treaty of Dover of May 1670, not only does England and France join in an offensive alliance against the Dutch, but Charles promises to announce his conversion to Roman Catholicism. If this provokes trouble from his subjects, he is assured of French military and financial support. He sees to it that the conversion clause of the treaty is not made public.
This clause, which is the most controversial act of Charles II’s reign, can be explained as a shortsighted bid for Louis XIV’s confidence. In this, however, it fails. Louis neither welcomes Charles’s intentions nor believes in them, and, in the event, it is only upon his deathbed that Charles is received into the Roman Catholic Church. But he has now fatally compromised himself. Although he subsequently attempts to pursue policies independent of Louis, he remains bound to him by inclination as well as by the fear of blackmail. More seriously, he has lost the confidence of his subjects, who deplore the French alliance and distrust the whole tendency of his policies.
Other circumstances deepen Englishmen’s discontent with their king. By the 1670s the miscarriages of the queen have reduced hopes that Charles will have a legitimate heir, and in 1673 the second marriage of his brother James, Duke of York, to Mary of Modena, increases the possibility of the Catholic line of succession, for James’s conversion to the Roman church is well known. But it is for his autocratic character as much as for his religion that James is feared as his brother is not, and it is on his brother’s behalf that Charles eventually has to face the severest political storm of his reign.
The Popish Plot of 1678 is an elaborate tissue of fictions built around a skeleton of even stranger truths. The allegations of Titus Oates, a former Anglican cleric who has been expelled from a Jesuit seminary, that Roman Catholics plan to murder Charles to make James king, seem to be confirmed by scraps of evidence of which Charles is justifiably skeptical. But he is obliged to bow before the gusts of national hysteria that seek to bar his brother from the line of succession. Between 1679 and 1681, Charles very nearly loses control of his government. Deprived of his chief minister, the Earl of Danby, who has been compromised by his negotiations with France, he has to allow Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 2nd Earl of Shaftesbury, and his Whig supporters, who uphold the power of the Parliament—men whom he detests—to occupy positions of power in central and local government. Three general elections produce three equally unmanageable parliaments, and, although Charles publicly denies the legitimacy of his first son, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, he has to send his Catholic brother James out of the country and offer a plan of limitations that will bind James if he comes to the throne. The plan proves to be unacceptable both to the Whigs and to James, and, when Charles falls seriously ill in the summer of 1679, there is real danger of civil conflict.
But Charles keeps his nerve. He defends his queen against slanders, dismisses the intractable parliaments, and recovers control of his government. His subjects’ dread of republican anarchy proves stronger than their suspicion of James, and from March 1681, when he dissolves his last Parliament, Charles enjoys a nationwide surge of loyalty almost as fervent as that of 1660. He has made yet another secret treaty with France and in addition to a French subsidy can now count upon a healthy public revenue. Reforms at the Treasury, which he inaugurates in 1667, provide the crown with a firm basis of administrative control that is among Charles II’s most valuable legacies to English government.
As a result of these actions, Charles, who dies on February 6, 1685, at Whitehall in London, is able to end his reign in the kind of tranquil prosperity he has always sought.
