McGuckian is the youngest of six children to Brian McGuckian and his wife Pauline (née McKenna). He is named after his uncle, also Alexander Aloysius McGuckian, who dies five month before he is born. Yet another uncle, Daniel McGuckian, is a priest of the Diocese of Down and Connor and serves as parish priest of Cushendun and then Randalstown until his death in 1980. His father is a successful pig farmer who, alongside his brothers, develops the world’s biggest pig farm.
Two of McGuckian’s brothers are also Jesuit priests, while another brother is a businessman. Both of his sisters predecease him.
McGuckian is ordained to the priesthood on June 22, 1984, and makes his final profession on February 15, 1997.
Following ordination, McGuckian spends four years as a teacher in Clongowes Wood College and vocations director for the Jesuits, before undertaking a six month period of spiritual renewal in southern India and serving in a shanty town in Quezon City, Philippines.
McGuckian returns to Ireland in 1992, where he is appointed director of the Jesuit Communication Centre, during which he develops Sacred Space, a website which allows people to pray at their computer, in 1999, and Catholic news service CatholicIreland.net in 2004.
McGuckian also serves as editor of both An Timire and Foilseacháin Ábhair Spioradálta, later translating the autobiography of Ignatius of Loyola into Irish under the title Scéal an Oilithrigh. He also co-authors the drama 1912 – A Hundred Years On with Presbyterian historian Philip Orr in 2011, which looks at the experiences of the Ulster Covenant and the wider Home Rule movement from both nationalist and unionist perspectives.
McGuckian also serves as chaplain to many of the Gaelscoileanna in the Diocese of Down and Connor, and subsequently as chaplain to Ulster University campuses in Belfast and Jordanstown. Following the publication of the Living Church Report, which outlines the findings of a synodal process within the diocese, he is appointed by Noël Treanor in 2012 to set up and lead the Living Church Office, whose aim is to realise the hopes and aspirations expressed in the report and subsequently in the upcoming diocesan pastoral plan.
McGuckian is also appointed diocesan director of formation for the permanent diaconate in 2014, and also works during his directorship of the Living Church Office to establish pastoral communities across the diocese, through fostering a culture of co-responsibility for the mission of the Church between clergy and lay people.
McGuckian is appointed Bishop-elect of Raphoe by Pope Francis on June 9, 2017. His appointment makes him the first member of the Jesuits to be appointed a bishop in Ireland.
In an interview with The Irish Catholic in September 2019, McGuckian says that having a home is as fundamental as the right to life and education, and that the Government must be “pushed” to enshrine a right to housing in the Constitution of Ireland. He also joins a number of church leaders in the West of Ireland on September 16, 2021, in calling on the Irish government to offer reparations to homeowners whose properties are affected by defective concrete blocks.
In an interview with The Irish Catholic in February 2021, McGuckian takes issue with the view held by political leaders that public worship is deemed to be “non-essential” during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of Ireland. Quoting Pope Francis, who states that “the right to worship must be respected, protected and defended by civil authorities like the right to bodily and physical health,” he expresses a need to let political leaders know that public worship is not only central, but also “utterly essential.”
Following a fatal explosion in Creeslough, County Donegal, on October 7, 2022, McGuckian refers to the explosion as “the darkest day in Donegal,” adding that the local community is “living through a nightmare of shock and horror.” He also concelebrates at the Funeral Masses of each of the victims, describing the fact that the parish church would be holding two funerals in the space of three hours as “surreal.”
McGuckian is appointed Bishop of Down and Connor by Pope Francis on February 2, 2024. In his first address following his appointment, he expresses his hope that the restoring of the Northern Ireland Executive will help the most vulnerable in society.
The Irish Catholic Hierarchy formally endorses Home Rule on February 16, 1886, a significant moment in the Irish political landscape.
The Home Rule movement, led by Charles Stewart Parnell (pictured) and the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), seeks to establish a separate Irish parliament to handle domestic affairs while remaining within the British Empire. The campaign gains significant momentum throughout the late 19th century, but opposition from the British government and Irish unionists make progress difficult. Up to this point, the Catholic Church in Ireland had largely remained cautious about taking an overtly political stance on Home Rule. However, their endorsement on this day in 1886 changes the dynamic of the movement, giving it an unprecedented boost in legitimacy and support among the Irish people.
The Catholic Church plays a central role in Irish society, wielding immense influence over the daily lives of the majority Catholic population. Many of the clergy are already sympathetic to nationalist aspirations, but an official endorsement from the hierarchy signals a unified front that cannot be ignored. By formally backing Home Rule, the bishops strengthen nationalist demands and provide moral authority to the movement, reinforcing the argument that Home Rule is not just a political necessity but also a just and rightful cause.
This endorsement comes at a critical time. British Prime MinisterWilliam Ewart Gladstone is preparing to introduce the Government of Ireland Bill 1886, commonly known as the First Home Rule Bill, in April 1886, a legislative measure that, if passed, would grant Ireland limited self-government. The backing of the Catholic hierarchy is instrumental in rallying public support and reinforcing Parnell’s leadership. While the bill ultimately fails in the House of Commons on June 8, 1886, due to strong opposition from Conservative and Unionist factions, the Catholic Church’s stance ensures that Home Rule remains a dominant political issue for decades to come.
Despite the failure of the 1886 bill, the endorsement by the Catholic bishops has long-term implications. It solidifies a powerful alliance between Irish nationalism and the Church, an influence that persists well into the 20th century. The endorsement also helps to counteract Protestant unionist claims that Home Rule is merely a radical or sectarian endeavor, presenting it instead as a moderate and just political cause with widespread backing.
Over the following years, Home Rule remains a contentious issue, with subsequent attempts to pass similar legislation met with resistance. The Government of Ireland Bill 1893, commonly known as the Second Home Rule Bill, is again defeated in the House of Lords, and it is not until the Government of Ireland Act 1914, commonly referred to as the Third Home Rule Bill, that significant progress is made. Even then, implementation is delayed by World War I and ultimately overshadowed by the 1916 Easter Rising and the Irish War of Independence.
Looking back, the Catholic Church’s endorsement of Home Rule on February 16, 1886, is a defining moment in Ireland’s political history. It reinforces the nationalist cause, legitimizes the demand for self-governance, and plays a crucial role in shaping Ireland’s path toward eventual independence. While Home Rule itself is never fully realized in the form originally envisioned, its legacy influences the Irish Free State’s establishment in 1922 and Ireland’s eventual emergence as a fully independent republic.
(From: “February 16, 1886 – The Catholic Church Embraces Home Rule,” by Bagtown Clans, This Day in Irish History Substack, http://www.thisdayinirishhistory.substack.com, February 2025)
Macardle is born in Dundalk, County Louth, on March 7, 1889, into a wealthy brewing family famous for producing Macardle’s Ale. Her father, Sir Thomas Callan Macardle, is a Catholic who supports John Redmond and the Irish Home Rule movement, while her mother, Lucy “Minnie” Macardle, comes from an English Anglican background and is politically a unionist. Lucy converts to Catholicism upon her marriage to Thomas. Macardle and her siblings are raised as Catholics, but Lucy, who is politically isolated in Ireland, “inculcated in her children an idealised view of England and an enthusiasm for the British empire“. She receives her secondary education in Alexandra College, Dublin—a school under the management of the Church of Ireland—and later attends University College Dublin (UCD). Upon graduating, she returns to teach English at Alexandra where she had first encountered Irish nationalism as a student. This is further developed by her first experiences of Dublin’s slums, which “convinced her that an autonomous Ireland might be better able to look after its own affairs” than the Dublin Castle administration could.
Between 1914 and 1916, Macardle lives and works in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England. There, her encounters with upper-class English people who express anti-Irish sentiment and support keeping Ireland in the British Empire by force further weakens her Anglophilia. Upon the outbreak of World War I, she supports the Allies, as does the rest of her family. Her father leads the County Louth recruiting committee while two of her brothers volunteer for the British Army. Her brother, Lieutenant Kenneth Callan Macardle, is killed at the Battle of the Somme, while another brother, Major John Ross Macardle, survives the war and earns the Military Cross. While Macardle is a student, the Easter Rising occurs, an experience credited for a further divergence of her views regarding republicanism and her family.
On January 19, 1919, Macardle is in the public gallery for the inaugural meeting of the First Dáil and witnesses it declare unilateral independence from the United Kingdom, which is ultimately the catalyst for the Irish War of Independence.
By 1919 Macardle has befriended Maud Gonne MacBride, the widow of the 1916 Easter Rising participant John MacBride, and together the two work at the Irish White Cross, attending to those injured in the war. It is during this period she also becomes a propagandist for the nationalist side.
Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921, Macardle takes the anti-treaty side in the ensuing Irish Civil War. Alongside Gonne MacBride and Despard, she helps found the Women Prisoners’ Defence League, which campaigns and advocates for republicans imprisoned by the newly established Irish Free State government. It is also during this same time that she begins working alongside Erskine Childers in writing for anti-treaty publications An Phoblacht and Irish Freedom.
In October 1922, Despard, Gonne MacBride and Macardle are speaking at a protest on O’Connell Street, Dublin against the arrest of Mary MacSwiney, a sitting Teachta Dála, by the Free State when Free State authorities move to break it up. Rioting follows and Free State forces open fire, resulting in 14 people being seriously wounded while hundreds of others are harmed in the subsequent stampede to flee. Following the event, Macardle announces she is going to pursue support of the Anti-treaty side full-time in a letter to Alexandra College, which ultimately leads to her dismissal on November 15, 1922. In the following days Macardle is captured and imprisoned by the Free State government and subsequently serves time in both Mountjoy Prison and Kilmainham Gaol, with Rosamond Jacob as her cellmate. During one point at her time in Kilmainham, Macardle is beaten unconscious by male wardens. She becomes close friends with Jacob and shares a flat with her in Rathmines later in the 1920s.
The Irish Civil War concludes in the spring of 1923, and Macardle is released from prison on May 9.
Following the Irish Civil War, Macardle remains active in Sinn Féin and is drawn into the camp of its leader Éamon de Valera and his wife Sinéad. She travels alongside the de Valeras as they tour the country and she is a frequent visitor to their home. As the trust between Macardle and de Valera develops, de Valera asks her to travel to County Kerry to investigate and document what later becomes known as the Ballyseedy massacre of March 1923, in which a number of unarmed republican prisoners are reportedly killed in reprisals. She obliges, and by May 1924 she has compiled a report that is released under the title of The Tragedies of Kerry.” Immediately upon the release of the report, the Minister for DefenceRichard Mulcahy sets up an inquiry in June 1924 to carry out a separate investigation by the government. However, the government’s inquiry comes to the conclusion there had been no wrongdoing committed. Her book The Tragedies of Kerry remains in print and is the first journalistic historical account of the Irish Civil War from those on the republican side detailing Ballyseedy, Countess Bridge and various other incidents that occur in Kerry during this time.
In 1926, Éamon de Valera resigns as President of Sinn Féin and walks out of the party following a vote against his motion that members of the party should end their policy of abstentionism against Dáil Éireann. De Valera and his supporters, including Macardle, form the new political party Fianna Fáil in May 1926, with Macardle immediately elected to the party’s National Executive|Ard Chomhairle, one of six female members out of twelve on the original party National Executive, the others being Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Kathleen Clarke, Countess Constance Markievicz and Linda Kearns. Macardle is made the party’s director of publicity. However, she resigns from Fianna Fáil in 1927 when the new party endorses taking their seats in Dáil Eireann. Nevertheless, her views remain relatively pro-Fianna Fáil and pro-de Valera.
Macardle recounts her civil war experiences in Earthbound: Nine Stories of Ireland (1924). She continues as a playwright for the next two decades. In her dramatic writing, she uses the pseudonymMargaret Callan. In many of her plays a domineering female character is always present. This is thought to be symbolic of her own relationship with her own mother. Her parents’ marriage had broken up as her mother returned to England and her father raised the children with servants in Cambrickville and they were sent away for school. This female character holds back the growth and development of the younger female character in Dorothy’s plays and writings.
By 1931, Macardle takes up work as a writer for The Irish Press, which is owned by de Valera and leans heavily toward supporting Fianna Fáil and Irish republicanism in general. In addition to being a theatre and literary critic for the paper, she also occasionally writes pieces of investigative journalism such as reports on Dublin’s slums. In the mid-1930s she also becomes a broadcaster for the newly created national radio station Radio Éireann.
In 1937, Macardle writes and publishes the work by which she is best known, The Irish Republic, an in-depth account of the history of Ireland between 1919 until 1923. Because of the book, political opponents and some modern historians consider her to have been a hagiographer toward de Valera’s political views. In 1939 she admits, “I am a propagandist, unrepentant and unashamed.” Overall, however, the book is well-received, with reviews ranging from “glowing” to measured praise. She is widely praised for her research, thorough documentation, range of sources and narration of dramatic events, alongside reservations about the book’s political slant. The book is reprinted several times, most recently in 2005. Éamon de Valera considers The Irish Republic the only authoritative account of the period from 1916 to 1926, and the book is widely used by de Valera and Fianna Fáil over the years and by history and political students. She spends seven years writing the book in a cottage in Delgany, County Wicklow, and it is a day-by-day account of the history of the events in Ireland from 1919 to 1923 recorded in painstaking detail together with voluminous source material.
In 1937, de Valera’s Fianna Fáil government is able to create a new Constitution of Ireland following a successful referendum. However, there is widespread criticism of the new Constitution from women, particularly republican women, as the language of the new Constitution emphasises that a woman’s place should be in the home. Macardle is among them, deploring what she sees as the reduced status of women in this new Constitution. Furthermore, she notes that the new Constitution drops the commitment of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic to guarantee equal rights and opportunities “without distinction of sex” and writes to de Valera questioning how anyone “with advanced views on the rights of women” can support it. DeValera also finds her criticising compulsory Irish language teaching in schools.
While working as a journalist with the League of Nations in the late 1930s, Macardle acquires a considerable affinity with the plight of Czechoslovakia being pressed to make territorial concessions to Nazi Germany. Believing that “Hitler‘s war should be everybody’s war,” she disagrees with de Valera’s policy of neutrality. She goes to work for the BBC in London, develops her fiction and, in the war’s aftermath, campaigns for refugee children – a crisis described in her book Children of Europe (1949). In 1951, she becomes the first president of the Irish Society of Civil Liberties.
Macardle dies of cancer on December 23, 1958, in a hospital in Drogheda, at the age of 69. Though she is somewhat disillusioned with the new Irish State, she leaves the royalties from The Irish Republic to her close friend Éamon de Valera, who had written the foreword to the book. De Valera visits her when she is dying. She is accorded a state funeral, with de Valera giving the oration. She is buried in Sutton, Dublin.
Moore is the eldest son of Queen Victoria‘s honorary physician in Ireland, Dr. William Moore of Rosnashane, Ballymoney, and Sidney Blanche Fuller. His ancestors came to Ulster during the Plantation of Ulster, settling at Ballymoney, at which time they were Quakers. The Moore Lodge estate is inherited from a relative. The family owns several other houses: Moore’s Grove and Moore’s Fort. He goes on to become a Deputy Lieutenant for County Antrim and a Justice of the Peace.
In 1903, Moore is one of the first landowners of Ireland to sell off their estates under the land acts. By the early 1920s he owns a Belfastpied-à-terre called “Glassnabreedon,” in the village of Whitehouse, four miles north of Belfast. This house is once owned by the son of Nicholas Grimshaw, Ireland’s first cotton pioneer.
Moore becomes a member of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland and is a founder member of the Ulster Council. He is a passionate Orangeman: his vehemence in defending Ulster’s right to oppose Irish Home Rule is said to alarm even those who share his views. Speaking in England on March 10, 1913, he makes his feelings clear on the possibility of Irish Home Rule: “I have no doubt, if Home Rule is carried, its baptism in Ireland will be a baptism in blood.” He shows little respect for English politicians, and has nothing but contempt for Southern Unionists. The eventual political settlement in 1921 meets with his approval.
Moore dies at his home, Moore Lodge, in Ballymoney on November 28, 1944, less than a week after his 80th birthday. He is buried in the family burial ground, “Lamb’s Fold,” two days later.
In the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, de Valera commands an occupied building and is the last commander to surrender. Because of his American birth, he escapes execution by the British but is sentenced to penal servitude. Released in 1917 but arrested again and deported in May 1918 to England, where he is imprisoned, he is acclaimed by the Irish as the chief survivor of the uprising and in October 1917 is elected president of the Irish republican and democratic socialistSinn Féin political party, which wins three-fourths of all the Irish constituencies in December 1918.
After Dáil Éireann ratifies the treaty by a small majority in 1922, de Valera supports the republican resistance in the ensuing Irish Civil War. W. T. Cosgrave’s Irish Free State ministry imprisons him, but he is released in 1924 and then organizes a republican opposition party that does not sit in Dáil Éireann. In 1927, however, he persuades his followers to sign the oath of allegiance as “an empty political formula,” and his new Fianna Fáil (“Soldiers of Destiny”) party then enters the Dáil, demanding abolition of the oath of allegiance, of the governor-general, of the Seanad Éireann (senate) as then constituted, and of land-purchase annuities payable to Great Britain. The Cosgrave ministry is defeated by Fianna Fáil in 1932, and de Valera, as head of the new ministry, embarks quickly on severing connections with Great Britain. He withholds payment of the land annuities, and an “economic war” results. Increasing retaliation by both sides enables de Valera to develop his program of austere national self-sufficiency in an Irish-speaking Ireland while building up industries behind protective tariffs. In the new Constitution of Ireland, ratified by referendum in 1937, the Irish Free State becomes Ireland, a sovereign, independent democracy tenuously linked with the British Commonwealth (under the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936) only for purposes of diplomatic representation.
De Valera’s prestige is enhanced by his success as president of the council of the League of Nations in 1932 and of its assembly in 1938. He also enters negotiations with British Prime MinisterNeville Chamberlain in which he guarantees that he will never allow Ireland to be used as a base for attacking Britain in the event of war. This culminates in the Anglo-Irish defense agreement of April 1938, whereby Britain relinquishes the naval bases of Cobh, Berehaven, and Lough Swilly (retained in a defense annex to the 1921 treaty), and in complementary finance and trade treaties that end the economic war. This makes possible de Valera’s proclamation in September 1939, upon the outbreak of World War II, that Ireland will remain neutral and will resist attack from any quarter. In secret, however, de Valera also authorizes significant military and intelligence assistance to both the British and the Americans throughout the war. He realizes that a German victory will imperil Ireland’s independence, of which neutrality is the ultimate expression. By avoiding the burdens and destruction of the war, de Valera achieves a relative prosperity for Ireland in comparison with the war-torn countries of Europe, and he retains office in subsequent elections.
In 1948, a reaction against the long monopoly of power and patronage held by de Valera’s party enables the opposition, with the help of smaller parties, to form an interparty government under John A. Costello. Ironically, this precarious coalition collapses within three years after Ireland becomes a republic by means of the repeal of the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936 and the severance of all ties with the British Commonwealth, an act de Valera had avoided. De Valera resumes office until 1954, when he appeals unsuccessfully for a fresh mandate, and Costello forms his second interparty ministry. No clearly defined difference now exists between the opposing parties in face of rising prices, continued emigration, and a backward agriculture. De Valera claims, however, that a strong single-party government is indispensable and that all coalitions must be weak and insecure. On this plea he obtains, in March 1957, the overall majority that he demands.
In 1959, de Valera agrees to stand as a candidate for the presidency. He resigns his position as Taoiseach and leader of the Fianna Fáil party. In June he is elected president, and is reelected in 1966. He retires to a nursing home near Dublin in 1973 and dies there on August 29, 1975.
De Valera’s career spans the dramatic period of Ireland’s modern cultural and national revolution. As an anticolonial leader, a skillful constitutionalist, and a symbol of national liberation, he dominates Ireland in the half century following the country’s independence.
(From: “Éamon de Valera, president of Ireland,” Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com, last updated August 14, 2025)
Moran’s parents are Patrick and Alicia Cullen Moran. Of his three sisters, two become nuns, one of whom dies nursing cholera patients. His parents die by the time he is 11 years old. In 1842, at the age of twelve, he leaves Ireland in the company of his uncle, Paul Cullen, rector of the Pontifical Irish College in Rome. There he studies for the priesthood, first at the minor seminary and then at the major seminary.
Moran is considered so intellectually bright that he gains his doctorate by acclamation. By The age of 25 he speaks ten languages, ancient and modern. He focuses on finding and editing important documents and manuscripts related to Irish ecclesiastical history. Some editions of his works remain important source materials to this day.
Moran is appointed vice-rector at the Pontifical Irish College and also takes the chair of Hebrew at Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (CEP). He is also some-time vice-rector of the Scots College in Rome. In 1866, he is appointed secretary to his mother’s half-brother, Cardinal Paul Cullen of Dublin. He is also appointed professor of scripture at Holy Cross College, Dublin. He founds the Irish Ecclesiastical Record (on which he later models the Australasian Catholic Record).
In 1869, Moran accompanies Cardinal Cullen to the First Vatican Council, a council also attended by Melbourne‘s then-first archbishop, James Alipius Goold. According to Michael Daniel, it is generally agreed that the definition of the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility is based on Cullen’s proposal, and Ayres suggests that there is strong evidence that Cullen’s proposal is largely drafted by Moran. While in Rome and Ireland he is very active politically in opposing English Benedictine plans for monastic foundations undergirding the Catholic Church in Australia.
Moran is appointed coadjutor bishop of Ossory on December 22, 1871, and is consecrated on March 5, 1872 in Dublin by his uncle, Cardinal Paul Cullen. On the death of Bishop Edward Walsh, he succeeds as Bishop of Ossory on August 11, 1872. He champions Home Rule and is consulted by William Ewart Gladstone prior to the introduction of his Home Rule Bills.
Moran is personally chosen and promoted by Pope Leo XIII to head the Archdiocese of Sydney – a clear policy departure from the previous English Benedictine incumbents, John Bede Polding and Roger Vaughan, who were experiencing tension leading the predominantly Irish Australian Catholics. In the archbishop’s farewell audience with Leo XIII, it is evident that the intrigues of parties, the interference of government agencies and the influence of high ecclesiastics had made the matter almost impossible to decide by Propaganda. In the presence of others, the Pope says clearly: “We took the selection into our own hands. You are our personal appointment.” Moran is appointed to Australia on January 25, 1884, and arrives on September 8, 1884. He is created cardinal-priest on July 27, 1885, with the title of St. Susanna. The new Irish Australian cardinal makes it his business to make his presence and leadership felt.
Moran begins transforming the SydneySaint Patrick’s Day festivities by inaugurating the celebration of a Solemn Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral on Saint Patrick’s Day 1885. Over time the day’s events change from an Irish nationalist and political day into an occasion “for the demonstration of Irish Catholic power and respectable assimilation” as well as “for the affirmation of Irish Catholic solidarity.”
In 1886, it is estimated that Moran travels 2,500 miles over land and sea, visiting all the dioceses of New Zealand. In 1887, he travels 6,000 miles to consecrate fellow Irishman Matthew Gibney at Perth. He also travels to Ballarat, Bathurst, Bendigo, Hobart, Goulburn, Lismore, Melbourne and Rockhampton for the consecration of their cathedrals. Following the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, he supports the right of labourers to better their conditions.
During his episcopate, Moran consecrates 14 bishops (he is the principal consecrator of William Walsh, Michael Verdon, Patrick Vincent Dwyer, Armand Olier and also assists in consecrating Patrick Clune, among others). He ordains nearly 500 priests, dedicates more than 5,000 churches and professes more than 500 nuns. He makes five journeys to Rome on church business between 1885 and 1903, but does not participate in the papal conclave of 1903 because of the relatively short notice and the distance, making it impossible for him to reach Rome within 10 days of the death of Pope Leo.
Moran is a strong supporter of Federation, and in November 1896 attends the People’s Federal Convention in Bathurst. In March 1897, he stands as a candidate election of ten delegates from New South Wales to the Australasian Federal Convention. Although he states he will not attend the Convention in any official capacity, but in a solely individual one, his candidacy sparks a sectarian reaction. Twenty-nine per cent of voters give one of their ten votes to Moran, but he comes only thirteenth in number of total votes and is not elected.
From 1900 to 1901, Moran’s leadership survives a crisis when his personal secretary, Denis O’Haran, is named as co-respondent in the divorce case of the cricketer Arthur Coningham. Moran vigorously defends O’Haran and a jury finds in his favour.
Moran dies in Manly, Sydney, on August 16, 1911, aged 80. A quarter of a million people, the largest crowd ever to gather in Australia prior to that date, witness his funeral procession through the centre of Sydney. He is buried in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney.
Brayton is born Teresa Coca Boulanger in Kilbrook, the youngest daughter and fifth child of Hugh Boylan and Elizabeth Boylan (née Downes). Her family are long-time nationalists, with her great grandfather previously leading a battalion of pikesmen at the Battle of Prosperous.
Brayton is educated from the age of 5 in Newtown National School. She writes her first poem at the age of twelve, and soon after wins her first literary award. Later on, she trains to be a teacher, and then becomes an assistant teacher to her older sister Elizabeth in the same school she received her education.
Brayton’s father is a tenant farmer, and from a young age she witnesses the effects of the land wars in Ireland. She is a supporter of Parnell, the Irish National Land League and the Irish Home Rule movement. Her work is largely influenced by her family history and Irish nationalism.
In September 1895, Brayton emigrates to the United States at the age of 27. She first lives in Boston, Chicago, and later moves to New York City. She meets Richard H. Brayton, a French-Canadian who works as an executive in the Municipal Revenue Department, who she then marries. She looks after their home and focuses on her career as a freelance journalist. She lives in the United States for 40 years and becomes well known in Irish American circles as a prominent figure in the Celtic Fellowship. It was in the United States that her reputation is established.
In the 1880s, Brayton begins her career as a poet, writing poetry for both national and provincial Irish newspapers, including Young Ireland and the King’s County Chronicle. She uses the pseudonym “T. B. Kilbrook” while contributing to these papers.
Brayton continues writing under the pseudonym until moving to the United States, where she becomes an acclaimed writer and continues to contribute to papers including the Boston newspaper The Pilot, New York Monitor and Rosary Magazine. Her target audience is the Irish immigrant population of the United States. After establishing herself she releases her poetry in collections including Songs of Dawn (1913) and The Flame of Ireland (1926).
Brayton makes return trips to Ireland regularly and develops a relationship with nationalist peers, and the leaders of the Easter Rising. Upon returning to the United States, she becomes an activist for the Irish Republic and participates in organising the distribution of information to the Irish population through pamphlets and public speaking. Her contribution is acknowledged by Constance Markievicz. Her patriotism to Ireland admit her to the Celtic Fellowship in America, where she shares her poetry at events.
Brayton’s best-known poem is “The Old Bog Road,” which is later set to music by Madeline King O’Farrelly. It has since been recorded and released by many Irish musicians including Finbar Furey, Daniel O’Donnell and Eileen Donaghy, among many others. Many more of her best-known ballads include, The Cuckoo’s Call, By the Old Fireside and Takin’ Tea in Reilly’s.
Brayton makes her permanent return to Ireland at the age of 64 following the death of her husband in 1932 and continues her career as a journalist writing for Irish newspapers and publishes religious poetry in the volume Christmas Verses in 1934. A short story called The New Lodger written by Brayton is published by the Catholic Trust Society in 1933. She dedicates much of her work to the exiled Irish living in the United States, incorporating themes of nostalgia, the familiarity of home and religion throughout her poetry.
Initially upon moving back to Ireland, she lives for a few years with her sister in Bray, County Wicklow. She then moves to Waterloo Avenue, North Strand, County Dublin. Here, she witnesses the bombing of the North Strand on May 31, 1941 during World War II. Shortly after the bombing, she eventually settles back in Kilbrook, where she was born, and lives there for the rest of her life. She spends a brief period of time in the Edenderry Hospital before her death. During her stay there she becomes a good friend with Padraig O’Kennedy, the “Leinster Leader,” who is able to reveal to her something that is linked to a family member of his. A copy of her The Old Bog Road which had been set to music and autographed by her while she was living in the United States. She had it sent to O’Kennedy’s eldest son and on it she wrote the words: “To the boy who sings the Old Bog Road so sweetly.”
Two years after her return to Kilbrook, on August 19, 1943, Brayton dies in the same room where her mother had given birth to her over 75 years previously. She is buried at the Cloncurry cemetery in County Kildare. Her funeral is attended by many, including the then Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera.
From the vivid imagery she speaks of in her poetry, Brayton, both a poet and a novelist, is described by some as “the poet of the homes of Ireland.” Such scenes include the vivid imagery of the fireside chats, the sound of her latch lifting as neighbours in to visit at night from her poem “The Old Boreen” and about her home cooking and work from “When the Leaves Begin to Fall.” Such images can be compared to most Irish households and can depict a vivid picture to those reading her poetry.
Brayton’s poetry leaves a lasting sense of Irish beauty and community. This can be seen in such poems as “A Christmas Blessing” where she speaks of “taking and giving in friendship” during Christmas. Since her passing she has continued to keep an audience from overseas from Boston and New York primarily, this as a result of the reminder her poems give to Irish exiles of Irish traditions and music which was close to them. While her poems are more often serious, some portray an almost comical undertone tone. In an article in The Irish Times, her poetry is also said to have a racy feel to them.
The 1886 Belfast riots are a series of intense riots that begin in Belfast on June 4, 1886, and continue throughout the summer and autumn of 1886.
In the late 19th century, Catholics began to migrate in large numbers to the prosperous city of Belfast in search of work. By the time of the riots, Catholics make up over one-third of the population of the city. This migration brings with it sectarian tensions as Catholics and Protestants competed for jobs. As the minority, Catholics find themselves discriminated against in this area and are kept at the lower end of the labour market.
At this time there is a real possibility that the British government will establish a devolved Irish parliament (see Irish Home Rule Movement). Belfast Catholics believe that a devolved Irish government will be sympathetic to their situation and end the discrimination. Belfast Protestants believe this as well, and fear the end of their privileged position.
The introduction of the Bill leads to renewed sectarian tensions in Belfast. On June 3, a Catholic navvy sneers to a Protestant co-worker that under an Irish government Protestants will never get hired, even in Belfast. This represents the very worst fears of Protestants towards Home Rule and the story quickly spreads throughout Belfast. This leads to clashes between Protestant and Catholic shipyard labourers.
The riots intensif on June 8, the day that the Home Rule Bill is defeated in parliament. Celebrations are held throughout the city to celebrate the defeat. Some of the revellers attack Catholic homes and businesses. The police find themselves unable to cope with the situation. Reinforcements are sent in from other parts of Ireland. Most of the reinforcements are Catholic. A rumour that the reinforcements have been sent by Gladstone to punish Belfast Protestants for opposing Home Rule spreads throughout the city. It is encouraged by popular preachers such as Hugh Hanna and his Church of Ireland counterpart, the city’s Orange Order Grand Master, Rev. Richard Rutledge Kane. In the midst of the disorder, Kane declares that unless the police are disarmed, 200,000 armed Orangemen will relieve them of their weapons. The rioters thus begin to attack the police, and later the soldiers. Running battles between security forces and rioters lasts until June 14.
On June 22, the reinforcements are sent home by the city government, although some are kept as trouble is expected on July 12, the date of annual Protestant celebrations. Trouble does indeed erupt on the 12th and, contrary to the expectations of the government, the police find themselves overwhelmed by the Protestant attackers. Reinforcements have to be sent into Belfast again, and the threat of over 2,000 police officers and soldiers descending on the city causes the rioters to quit by July 14.
On the last Saturday of July, Hanna holds his annual outing for the Protestant children of Belfast. This outing usually involves a trip to the countryside, with marching and drumming along the way. Hanna agrees to comply with the city’s request that he forgo the drumming and marching due to the tense situation. As the outing makes its way through Belfast, disappointed local Protestants join in to march with their own drums and anti-Catholic banners. Marchers deliberately provoke the Catholics by marching into Catholic areas. Taunting quickly gives way to heavy street fighting between Catholics, Protestants and police. Bloody clashes on par with the riots in June last for a few days, but low-intensity rioting continues until September.
Officially thirty-one people are killed in the riots, although George Foy, who makes surgical reports on the riots, reckons that the real death toll might be as high as fifty. Hundreds are injured. Over four hundred arrests are made. An estimated £90,000 worth of property damage is incurred, and local economic activity is significantly compromised.
Pirrie is educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution before entering Harland & Wolff shipyard as a gentleman apprentice in 1862. Twelve years later he is made a partner in the firm, and on the death of Sir Edward Harland in 1895, he becomes its chairman, a position he holds until his death. As well as overseeing the world’s largest shipyard, he is elected Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1896, and is re-elected to the office as well as made an Irish Privy Counsellor the following year. He becomes Belfast’s first honorary freeman in 1898, and serves in the same year as High Sheriff of Antrim and subsequently of County Down. In February 1900, he is elected President of the UK Chamber of Shipping, where he had been vice-president the previous year. He helps finance the Liberals in Ulster in the 1906 United Kingdom general election, and that same year, at the height of Harland & Wolff’s success, he is raised to the peerage as Baron Pirrie, of the City of Belfast.
In February 1912, after chairing a famous meeting of the Ulster Liberal Association at which Winston Churchill defends the government’s policy of Home Rule for Ireland, Pirrie is jeered on the streets of Belfast, and assaulted as he boards a steamer in Larne: pelted with rotten eggs, herrings, and bags of flour. In 1910, the Ulster Liberal Association, an overwhelmingly Protestant body, with a weekly newspaper, and branch network throughout Ulster, adopts (in opposition to the Ulster Liberal Unionist Association) an explicitly pro-home rule position.
In the months leading up to the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, Pirrie is questioned about the number of life boats aboard the Olympic-classocean liners. He responds that the great ships are unsinkable and the rafts are to save others. This haunts him for the rest of his life. In April 1912, Pirrie is to travel aboard RMS Titanic, but illness prevents him.
During the war Pirrie is a member of the War Office Supply Board, and in 1918 becomes Comptroller-General of Merchant Shipbuilding, organising British production of merchant ships.
In 1921, Pirrie is elected to the Senate of Northern Ireland, and that same year is created ViscountPirrie of the City of Belfast, in the honours for the opening of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in July 1921, for his war work and charity work. In Belfast he is, on other grounds, already a controversial figure: a Protestant employer associated as a leading Liberal with a policy of Home Rule for Ireland.
Pirrie dies at sea off Cuba on June 7, 1924. His body is embalmed. On June 13, Ebro reaches Pier 42 on the North River in New York City, where Pirrie’s friend Andrew Weir, 1st Baron Inverforth and his wife meet Viscountess Pirrie and her sister. UK ships in the port of New York lower their flags to half-mast, and Pirrie’s body is transferred to Pier 59, where it is embarked on White Star Line‘s RMS Olympic, one of the largest ships Pirrie ever built, to be repatriated to the UK. He is buried in Belfast City Cemetery. The barony and viscountcy die with him. Lady Pirrie dies on June 19, 1935. A memorial to Pirrie in the grounds of Belfast City Hall is unveiled in 2006.
Blackham is born in London, England, on December 16, 1891. His father, William George Blackham, is an Ulster Protestant from Newry, while his mother is an Englishwoman named Evison Elizabeth Saunders. An uncle is Robert J. Blackham who is the Surgeon-General to the British Army in Ireland. The family are evangelical Protestants, against which he rebels. Having been brought up to take the Bible literally, he suffers a religious crisis upon the realisation his teachers at school do not. He finds the transition to adulthood difficult, particularly due to the early death of his father.
For a time, Blackham moves in socialist circles, under the influence of Ulster socialist Robert Wilson Lynd. However, upon the discovery that his father had been a Protestant who had been in favour of Irish home rule and also had some republican sympathies, he turns toward Irish nationalism.
Blackham becomes involved in the Gaelic League while in London. he Gaelicizes his name to Aodh Sandrach de Blácam or Hugh de Blácam, despite his non-Gaelic ethnic origin. He learns the Irish language from the essayist Robert Wilson Lynd. During this time, he seeks to synthesize his urge to reclaim his sense of Irish nationality with the works and thoughts of hardline Catholic author G. K. Chesterton. It is partially because of Chesterton’s influence that he converts to Catholicism, although the conversion of Protestant Irish Nationalists to Catholicism is common throughout the early 20th century. Another influence upon his decision to convert is his desire to marry Catholic Mary McCarville of County Monaghan.
In May 1914 de Blácam returns to Ireland and begins working as a freelance journalist. He joins the Enniscorthy Echo as a journalist in 1915.
During the Irish War of Independence de Blácam writes nationalist propaganda alongside Arthur Griffith and Herbert Moore Pim. He is interned by the British in 1919. During this time period he writes two political manifestoes: Towards the Republic; a study of new Ireland’s social and political aims (1918) and What Sinn Féin Stands For (1921). The two books argue that at their root, Catholic social teaching (CST) and Bolshevism are essentially identical and that Ireland, having only experienced feudalism and capitalism because of external forces, can skip many of the phrases normally described in the Marxist Trajectory of historical development and go straight to a soviet-type society, an idea not dissimilar to the two-stage theory. He imagines this soviet-type society to be an Irish-speaking decentralised rural cooperative commonwealth. Critics of Sinn Féin frequently cite his works as proof of the infeasibility of Sinn Féin’s aims.
De Blácam opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty and subsequently aids the Anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish Civil War. For this he is interned by the newly created Irish Free State in 1922. Following his release, he continues to pin his flag to the mast of Éamon de Valera and his newly formed Fianna Fáil party. He believes De Valera fully embodies his own political ideas.
During the 1920s de Blácam joins The Irish Times, which he later leaves to become editor of The Catholic Standard. For seventeen years he writes a feature in the Fianna Fáil aligned The Irish Press called “Roddy the Rover.”
It was also during the 1920s that de Blácam moves to Dublin, where he begins to move in the same circles as George Bernard Shaw, George Russell, and W. B. Yeats. He hopes all three men might one day convert to Catholicism as he did and is sorely disappointed when each do not. Upon the death of Yeats, he goes so far as to refer to Yeats’ poem as “Demonic.” He has similar hopes for Peadar O’Donnell but is similarly disappointed in his lack of interest in conversion.
In 1938 de Blácam publishes The Black North, a book which carries an introduction by de Valera. In the book he argues that Ulster Protestants are in actuality both Irish and Catholic, but they simply do not realise it. Among his arguments to support this idea are the suggestions that the presbyterian emphasis on self-government is derived from the Gaelic clan tradition, that presbyterian “kailyard” writers of rural nostalgia such as Lydia Mary Foster exemplify the naturally Irish piety and purity of her co-religionists, and that the fact that some workers commute from the Armagh borderland to work in Dundalk factories prove that the south is better off economically than the north.
It is suggested de Blácam is an influence upon de Valera’s 1943 broadcast “The Ireland That We Dreamed Of.” Politically he is highly considered about rural depopulation and is involved in a number of organisations seeking to end it. He advocates more economic autarky and cultural protectionism to combat rural depopulation and lamented urbanisation and industrialisation. He also tries to convince the Fianna Fáil executive that they should ban women from emigration as well as ban women from factories in order to force women to remain in rural Ireland. His ideas fail to impress the executive, with Seán MacEntee in particular standing in strong disagreement.
De Blácam is a member of the Fianna Fáil executive until 1947, when he defects to the upstart Irish Republican party Clann na Poblachta. For this move he is immediately fired from The Irish Press. He stands for Clann na Poblachta in the Louth constituency at the 1948 Irish general election but is not elected.
During the brief period in which Clann na Poblachta is in government, de Blácam serves as an official spokesman for the Department of Health and as a speechwriter to Noël Browne, the embattled Minister for Health.
De Blácam dies while working in the Custom House on January 16, 1951. His funeral is attended by many dignitaries including TaoiseachJohn A. Costello and former Taoiseach Éamon de Valera. He is buried in New Mellifont Abbey, County Louth.
seamus dubhghaill 