seamus dubhghaill

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

Tag Archives: Armagh (County Armagh)


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The Armagh Rail Disaster

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The Armagh rail disaster occurs on June 12, 1889, near Armagh, County Armagh, when a crowded Sunday school excursion train fails to negotiate a steep incline. The steam locomotive is unable to complete the climb and the train stalls. The train crew decides to divide the train and take the front portion forward, leaving the rear portion on the running line. The rear portion has inadequate brakes and rolls back down the gradient, colliding with a following train. Eighty people are killed and 260 are injured, about a third of them children. It is the worst rail disaster in the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century and remains Ireland’s worst railway disaster ever.

Armagh Sunday school organises a day trip to the seaside resort of Warrenpoint, a distance of about 24 miles. A special Great Northern Railway of Ireland train is arranged for the journey, intended to carry about eight hundred passengers. The railway route is steeply graded and curved.

Asked to provide a train to take 800 excursionists, the locomotive department at Dundalk sends fifteen vehicles however instructions provided to the engineer are that the train is to consist of thirteen vehicles. The engineer objects to the use of fifteen vehicles. Witnesses say that the engineer asks for a second engine if the additional carriages are added but his request is refused by the station master as no additional engines are available.

Initially, the train progresses up the steep gradient at about 10 mph but stalls about 200 yards from the top of the gradient. To prevent the train from rolling back, the brakes are applied. The chief clerk directs the train crew to divide the train and proceed with the front portion to Hamilton’s Bawn station about two miles away, leaving it there and returning for the rear portion.

After uncoupling the rear portion, the engineer attempts to proceed on with the front portion. Initially, it rolls back slightly, jolting the rear portion which begins to roll back and gathers speed down the steep gradient back towards Armagh station. The train crew reverses the front portion and tries to catch the rear portion, but this proves to be impossible.

The line is operated on a time interval system so there is no means at Armagh of knowing that the line is not clear. The following scheduled passenger train leaves Armagh after the required 20-minute interval. It is proceeding up the gradient at about 25 mph when the engineer sees the approaching runaway vehicles at a distance of about 500 yards. He brakes his train and has reduced speed to 5 mph at the moment of collision. The two rearmost vehicles of the excursion train are utterly destroyed, and the third rearmost is very badly damaged.


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The Phoenix Park Murders

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Lord Frederick Cavendish, newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Henry Burke, the Permanent Undersecretary, are fatally stabbed in Phoenix Park, Dublin, on May 6, 1882 in what becomes known as the Phoenix Park Murders.

Cavendish, who is married to Lucy Cavendish, the niece of British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, and has worked as Gladstone’s personal secretary, arrives in Ireland on the day he is murdered. Cavendish and Burke are attacked as they walk to the Viceregal Lodge, which is the out-of-season residence of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Thomas Myles, resident surgeon at nearby Dr. Steevens’ Hospital, is summoned to render medical assistance to the victims. The then Lord Lieutenant, Lord Spencer, describes suddenly hearing screams, before witnessing a man running to the Lodge grounds shouting “Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke are killed.” Responsibility for the assassinations is claimed by a small hitherto unheard-of Republican organisation called the Irish National Invincibles.

The hunt for the perpetrators is led by Superintendent John Mallon, a Catholic man from Armagh. Mallon has a pretty shrewd idea of who has committed the crime and suspects a number of former Fenian activists. A large number of suspects are arrested and kept in prison by claiming they are connected with other crimes. By playing one suspect against another, Mallon gets several of them to reveal what they know.

James Carey, leader of The Invincibles, Michael Kavanagh, and Joe Hanlon agree to testify against the others. Joe Brady, Michael Fagan, Thomas Caffrey, Dan Curley, and Tim Kelly are convicted of the murders and all are hanged by William Marwood in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin between May 14 and June 9, 1883. Others, convicted as accessories to the crime, are sentenced to long prison terms. The getaway driver, James Fitzharris, is acquitted of murder but is retried as an accessory and convicted.

Only the case of Tim Kelly gives any real difficulty as he is only nineteen and generally said to look much younger. By referring to him as “a child” his defence counsel creates enough unease for two juries to disagree. He is found guilty only after an unprecedented third trial.

Charles Stewart Parnell makes a speech condemning the murders in 1882, which increases his already huge popularity in both Britain and Ireland. He has just enabled some reforms under the Kilmainham Treaty four days prior to the murders. Parnell’s reputation increases in Ireland, being seen as a more moderate reformer who would never excuse such tactics.

However, Parnell’s policy of allying his party to Gladstone’s Liberal Party in 1886 to enable Home Rule is also ultimately defeated by the murders. Gladstone’s Minister, Lord Hartington, is the elder brother of Lord Frederick Cavendish. Infuriated by the manner of his brother’s early death, Hartington splits with Gladstone on the Home Rule bills of 1886 and 1893 and leads the breakaway Liberal Unionist Association which allies itself to Lord Salisbury‘s conservative governments. In the ensuing 1886 general election, the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists sweep the board. This delays Home Rule by twenty-eight years, when the Third Irish Home Rule Bill is passed in 1914 but never effected.

In March 1887, The Times prints letters purportedly from Parnell claiming sympathy with the murderers and that his public denunciation of them was insincere. It emerges that the letters are forgeries written by journalist Richard Pigott. Parnell is personally vindicated by the Parnell Commission in 1888–89.


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Birth in Belfast of Ian Paisley

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Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, loyalist politician and Protestant religious leader from Northern Ireland is born on April 6, 1926, in Armagh, County Armagh.

Paisley becomes a Protestant evangelical minister in 1946 and remains one for the rest of his life. In 1951, he co-founds the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and is its leader until 2008. Paisley becomes known for his fiery speeches and regularly preaches and protests against Catholicism, ecumenism and homosexuality. He gains a large group of followers who are referred to as “Paisleyites.”

Paisley becomes involved in Ulster unionist/loyalist politics in the late 1950s. In the mid-late 1960s he leads and instigates loyalist opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. This leads to the outbreak of The Troubles in the late 1960s, a conflict that engulfs Northern Ireland for the next thirty years. In 1970, he becomes Member of Parliament for North Antrim and the following year he founds the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which he leads for almost forty years. In 1979, he becomes a Member of the European Parliament.

Throughout the Troubles, Paisley is seen as a firebrand and the face of hard-line unionism. He opposes all attempts to resolve the conflict through power-sharing between unionists and Irish nationalists/republicans, and all attempts to involve the Republic of Ireland in Northern affairs. His efforts help bring down the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974. He also opposes the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, with less success. His attempts to create a paramilitary movement culminate in Ulster Resistance. Paisley and his party also oppose the Northern Ireland peace process and Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

In 2005, Paisley’s DUP becomes the largest unionist party in Northern Ireland, displacing the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which has dominated unionist politics since 1905. In 2007, following the St. Andrews Agreement, the DUP finally agrees to share power with republican party Sinn Féin and consent to all-Ireland governance in certain matters. Paisley and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness become First Minister and deputy First Minister respectively in May 2007. Paisley steps down as First Minister and DUP leader in May 2008 and leaves politics in 2011. Paisley is made a life peer in 2010 as Baron Bannside.

In November 2011, Paisley announces to his congregation that he is retiring as a minister. He delivers his final sermon to a packed attendance at the Martyrs’ Memorial Hall on December 18, 2011, and finally retires from his religious ministry on January 27, 2012.

Paisley dies in Belfast on September 12, 2014. He is buried in Ballygowan, County Down on September 15 following a private funeral and a public memorial for 800 invited guests is held in the Ulster Hall on October 19. An obituary in The New York Times reports that late in life Paisley had moderated and softened his stances against Roman Catholics but that “the legacies of fighting and religious hatreds remained.”


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John Comyn Elected Archbishop of Dublin

John Comyn is elected Archbishop of Dublin and consecrated by the pope at Velletri on March 21, 1181. He is the first Englishman to be appointed to an Irish see.

He is chaplain to King Henry II of England and on his “urgent” recommendation is elected Archbishop of Dublin following the death of St. Laurence O’Toole in 1180. He has been a Benedictine monk at the Evesham Abbey.

In 1181, some of the clergy of Dublin assemble at Evesham and Comyn is elected to the archbishopric of Dublin. He is not then a priest but is subsequently ordained such later in the year at Velletri and on Palm Sunday, March 21, is consecrated archbishop by Pope Lucius III. The following year the pope grants him manors and lands in and around Dublin, which subsequently form the Manor of St. Sepulchre which remains under the authority of the Archbishop of Dublin until the 19th century. The pope also, in an effort to protect the Dublin archbishopric from claims from Canterbury, extends certain privileges to Comyn, which intensifies the rivalry between the sees of Dublin and Armagh for the Primacy of Ireland.

Comyn waits three years before visiting Ireland, until he is sent there by King Henry to prepare the reception of his son, Prince John. The king grants him lands and privileges which make him a Lord of Parliament. After his arrival in Ireland, John grants Comyn the Bishopric of Glendalough, although Comyn never has an opportunity to take this up in his lifetime. Under Pope Urban III, Comyn carries out a number of reforms of the Irish church to bring it into line with the church in England and in continental Europe.

In 1189, Archbishop Comyn assists at the coronation of King Richard I. The following year he demolishes the old parish church of St. Patrick, south of Dublin. He then erects a new building, next to his Palace of St. Sepulchre, which he elevates to the status of a collegiate church and later becomes St. Patrick’s Cathedral. This enables him to rule in his own Liberty, without the interference of mayor and citizens. Around this time, he enlarges the choir of Christ Church Cathedral.

Prince John grants Comyn further legal rights throughout the country of Ireland, while Comyn also receives the church and lands of All Hallows to the northeast of Dublin. Between Lusk and Swords, he founds the convent of Grace Dieu Abbey, which later becomes wealthy through grants from the Anglo-Norman prelates and magnates. However, when Hamo de Valoniis is appointed Justiciar of Ireland he seizes some of these lands for the treasury and himself. A dispute arises which causes Comyn to flee for his own safety to Normandy. Comyn appeals to Pope Innocent III, who settles the dispute, but John is angered by the actions of Comyn and does not reconcile himself with him until 1206.

Comyn dies six years later on October 25, 1212, and is buried in Christ Church Cathedral, where a marble monument is erected to his memory. Two years later William Piro, Bishop of Glendalough, dies whereupon the union of the sees granted by King John takes place.


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Birth of Cardinal Joseph MacRory in County Tyrone

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Joseph MacRory, an Irish Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who serves as Archbishop of Armagh from 1928 until his death in 1945, is born in Ballygawley, County Tyrone, on March 19, 1861.

MacRory is one of ten children of Francis MacRory, a farmer, and his wife, Rose Montague. He studies at St. Patrick’s College, Armagh, and St. Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth. He is ordained to the priesthood on September 13, 1885, and serves as the first president of St. Patrick’s Academy, Dungannon from 1886 to 1887. MacRory teaches Scripture and Modern Theology at St. Mary’s College, Oscott in England until 1889, when he is appointed Professor of Scripture and Oriental Languages at his alma mater of Maynooth College. In 1906, he co-founds the Irish Theological Quarterly. In 1912, he is made Vice-President of Maynooth.

On August 9, 1915, MacRory is appointed Bishop of Down and Connor by Pope Benedict XV and receives his episcopal consecration on November 14 from Cardinal Michael Logue. During his tenure, his life is threatened repeatedly due to the turbulent atmosphere in Belfast. He is a member of the Irish Convention from 1917 to 1918.

MacRory is promoted to Archbishop of Armagh and thus Primate of All Ireland on June 22, 1928, in succession to Patrick O’Donnell. He is elevated to the cardinalate on December 16, 1929, by Pope Pius XI.

MacRory is the papal legate at the 1933 laying of the foundation stone of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral in England. He also serves as one of the cardinal electors who participate in the 1939 papal conclave which ultimately selects Pope Pius XII.

MacRory is a strenuous opponent of social injustice, National Socialism, Protestantism, and the Partition of Ireland. It is MacRory who suggests to Eoin O’Duffy that he raise an Irish Brigade to aid Generalissimo Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. In 1940, he voices strong objections to conscription in the North.

MacRory is a supporter of the Gaelic League. Errigal Ciarán GAC, one of the most famous GAA clubs in Ireland, plays at Cardinal MacRory Park in Dunmoyle, County Tyrone, which is built in 1956 in his honour.

After a brief illness, Cardinal MacRory dies on October 13, 1945, at the age of 84 from a heart attack at Ara Coeli, the residence in Armagh. He is interred in St. Patrick’s Cathedral Cemetery, Armagh.


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The End of the “Border Campaign”

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On February 26, 1962, due to lack of support, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) ends what it calls “The Campaign of Resistance to British Occupation,” which is also known as the “Border Campaign.”

The Border Campaign is the first major military undertaking carried out by the IRA since the harsh security measures of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland governments had severely weakened it in the 1940s.

The campaign is launched with simultaneous attacks by approximately 150 IRA members on targets on the Border in the early hours of December 12, 1956. A BBC relay transmitter is bombed in Derry, a courthouse is burned in Magherafelt, a B-Specials post near Newry is burned, and a half-built Army barracks at Enniskillen is blown up. A raid on Gough barracks in Armagh is beaten off after a brief exchange of fire.

On December 14, an IRA column under Seán Garland detonates four bombs outside Lisnaskea Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) station before raking it with gunfire. Further attacks on Derrylin and Roslea RUC barracks on the same day are beaten off.

On the evening of December 30, 1956, the Teeling Column attacks the Derrylin RUC barracks again, killing RUC constable John Scally, the first fatality of the campaign. The new year of 1957 begins with Seán Garland and Dáithí Ó Conaill planning an attack on the Police station at Brookeborough but they assault the wrong building. Two IRA men, Seán South and Fergal O’Hanlon, are killed in the abortive attack. Garland is seriously wounded in the raid. He and the remainder of the group are pursued back over the border by British soldiers.

The year 1957 is the most active year of the IRA’s campaign, with 341 incidents recorded. In November, the IRA suffers its worst loss of life in the period when four of its members die preparing a bomb, which explodes prematurely, in a farmhouse at Edentubber, County Louth. The civilian owner of the house is also killed.

By 1958, the campaign’s initial impetus has largely dissipated with many within the IRA in favour of calling the campaign off. By mid-year, 500 republicans are in gaol or interned. The decline in IRA activity leads the Fianna Fáil government in the South to end internment in March 1959.

Following their release, some of the interned leaders met Seán Cronin in a farmhouse in County Laois and are persuaded to continue the campaign “to keep the flame alive.” The number of incidents falls to just 26 in 1960, with many of these actions consisting of minor acts of sabotage.

The final fatality of the conflict comes in November 1961, when an RUC officer, William Hunter, is killed in a gun battle with the IRA in south County Armagh.

By late 1961, the campaign is over and has cost the lives of eight IRA men, four republican supporters, and six RUC members. In addition, 32 RUC members are wounded. A total of 256 Republicans are interned in Northern Ireland during the campaign and another 150 or so in the Republic.

The Campaign is officially called off on February 26, 1962, with a press release drafted by Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and several other persons including members of the Army Council. The statement is released by the Irish Republican Publicity Bureau and signed “J. McGarrity, Secretary.”