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Birth of John MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam

John MacHale, Irish Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam and Irish nationalist, is born in Tubbernavine, near Lahardane, County Mayo on March 6, 1791.

MacHale’s parents are Patrick and Mary Mulkieran MacHale. He is so feeble at birth that he is baptised at home by Father Andrew Conroy. By the time he is five years of age, he begins attending a hedge school. Three important events happen during his childhood: the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the landing at Killala of French troops, whom the boy, hidden in a stacked sheaf of flax, watches marching through a mountain pass to Castlebar, and a few months later the brutal hanging of Father Conroy on a false charge of high treason.

Being destined for the priesthood, at the age of thirteen, the he is sent to a school at Castlebar to learn Latin, Greek, and English grammar. In his sixteenth year the Bishop of Killala gives him a busarship at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. At the age of 24, he is ordained a priest by Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin. In 1825, Pope Leo XII appoints him titular bishop of Maronia, and coadjutor bishop to Dr. Thomas Waldron, Bishop of Killala.

With his friend and ally, Daniel O’Connell, MacHale takes a prominent part in the important question of Catholic emancipation, impeaching in unmeasured terms the severities of the former penal code, which had branded Catholics with the stamp of inferiority. During 1826 his zeal is omnipresent. He calls on the Government to remember how the Act of Union in 1800 was carried by William Pitt the Younger on the distinct assurance and implied promise that Catholic emancipation, which had been denied by the Irish Parliament, should be granted by the Parliament of the Empire.

Oliver Kelly, Archbishop of Tuam, dies in 1834, and the clergy selects MacHale as one of three candidates, to the annoyance of the Government who despatches agents to induce Pope Gregory XVI not to nominate him to the vacant see. Disregarding their request, the pope appoints MacHale Archbishop of Tuam. He is the first prelate since the Reformation who has received his entire education in Ireland. The corrupt practices of general parliamentary elections and the Tithe War cause frequent rioting and bloodshed, and are the subjects of denunciation by the new archbishop, until the passing of a Tithes bill in 1838. He also leads the opposition to the Protestant Second Reformation, which is being pursued by evangelical clergy in the Church of Ireland, including the Bishop of Tuam, Killala and Achonry, Thomas Plunket.

The repeal of the Acts of Union 1800, advocated by O’Connell, enlists MacHale’s ardent sympathy and he assists the Liberator in many ways, and remits subscriptions from his priests for this purpose. In his zeal for the cause of the Catholic religion and of Ireland, so long down-trodden, but not in the 1830s, he frequently incurs from his opponents the charge of intemperate language, something not altogether undeserved. In his anxiety to reform abuses and to secure the welfare of Ireland, by an uncompromising and impetuous zeal, he makes many bitter and unrelenting enemies, particularly British ministers and their supporters.

The Great Famine of 1846–47 affects his diocese more than any. In the first year he announces in a sermon that the famine is a divine punishment on his flock for their sins. Then by 1846 he warns the Government as to the state of Ireland, reproaches them for their dilatoriness, and holds up the uselessness of relief works. From England as well as other parts of the world, cargoes of food are sent to the starving Irish. Bread and soup are distributed from the archbishop’s kitchen. Donations sent to him are acknowledged, accounted for, and disbursed by his clergy among the victims.

The death of O’Connell in 1847 is a setback to MacHale as are the subsequent disagreements within the Repeal Association. He strongly advises against the violence of Young Ireland. Over the next 30 years he becomes involved in political matters, particularly those involving the church. Toward the end of his life he becomes less active in politics.

MacHale attends the First Vatican Council in 1869. He believes that the favourable moment has not arrived for an immediate definition of the dogma of papal infallibility. Better to leave it a matter of faith, not written down, and consequently he speaks and votes in the council against its promulgation. Once the dogma had been defined, he declares the dogma of infallibility “to be true Catholic doctrine, which he believed as he believed the Apostles’ Creed“. In 1877, to the disappointment of the archbishop who desires that his nephew should be his co-adjutor, Dr. John McEvilly, Bishop of Galway, is elected by the clergy of the archdiocese, and is commanded by Pope Leo XIII after some delay, to assume his post. He had opposed this election as far as possible, but submits to the papal order.

Every Sunday MacHale preaches a sermon in Irish at the cathedral, and during his diocesan visitations he always addresses the people in their native tongue, which is still largely used in his diocese. On journeys he usually converses in Irish with his attendant chaplain, and has to use it to address people of Tuam or the beggars who greet him whenever he goes out. He preaches his last Irish sermon after his Sunday Mass, April 1881. He dies in Tuam seven months later, on November 7, 1881.

A marble statue perpetuates his memory on the grounds of the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Tuam. MacHale Park in Castlebar, County Mayo and Archbishop McHale College in Tuam are named after him. In his birthplace the Parish of Addergoole, the local GAA Club, Lahardane MacHales, is named in his honour. The Dunmore GAA team, Dunmore MacHales, is also named after him.


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The Trial & Conviction of Theobald Wolfe Tone

Theobald Wolfe Tone, a leading Irish revolutionary figure and one of the founding members of the Society of United Irishmen, is tried and convicted of treason by a court-martial in Dublin on November 10, 1798 and sentenced to be hanged.

When the Irish Rebellion of 1798 breaks out in Ireland, Wolfe Tone urges the French Directory to send effective assistance to the Irish rebels. All that can be promised is a number of raids to descend simultaneously around the Irish coast. One of these raids under General Jean Joseph Amable Humbert succeeds in landing a force near Killala, County Mayo, and gains some success in Connacht (particularly at Castlebar) before it is subdued by General Gerard Lake and Charles Cornwallis. Wolfe Tone’s brother Matthew is captured, tried by court-martial and hanged. A second raid, accompanied by James Napper Tandy, comes to a disastrous end on the coast of County Donegal.

Wolfe Tone takes part in a third raid, under Admiral Jean-Baptiste-François Bompart, with General Jean Hardy in command of a force of 2,800 men. He certainly knows before departing that the odds against them are incredibly long. Most of the United Irish organization has already spent itself in Wexford, Ulster, and other places. There is one slim reed of hope for success – the news from Hubert, who is sweeping the British before him in Mayo with his 1,000 Frenchmen and Irish rebel allies. Wolfe Tone once said he would accompany any French force to Ireland even if it were only a corporal’s guard, so he sails off with Hardy’s Frenchmen aboard the Hoche.

They are intercepted by a large British fleet at Buncrana on Lough Swilly on October 12, 1798. Escape aboard one of the small, fast ships is Wolfe Tone’s only hope to avoid a hangman’s noose but he refuses to transfer from the large, slow Hoche, which has little choice but certain sinking or capture. He refuses offers by Napoleon Bonaparte and other French officers of escape in a frigate before the Battle of Tory Island. “Shall it be said,” he asks them, “that I fled while the French were fighting the battle of my country?”

The Hoche withstands an attack by five British ships for several hours, with Wolfe Tone commanding one of her batteries. Inevitably the masts and rigging of the Hoche are shot away and she strikes her colors. Wolfe Tone is dressed in a French adjutant general‘s uniform, but there is little chance of him avoiding detection with so many former acquaintances among the British. He is thrown into chains taken prisoner when the Hoche surrenders.

When the prisoners are landed at Letterkenny Port a fortnight later, Sir George Hill recognises Wolfe Tone in the French adjutant general’s uniform in Lord Cavan’s privy-quarters at Letterkenny. At his trial by court-martial in Dublin on November 8, 1798, Wolfe Tone makes a speech avowing his determined hostility to England and his intention “by frank and open war to procure the separation of the countries.” Recognising that the court is certain to convict him, he asks that “the court should adjudge me to die the death of a soldier, and that I may be shot.” His request to be shot is denied.

On November 10, 1798, Wolfe Tone is found guilty and sentenced to be hanged on November 12. Before this sentence is carried out, either he attempts suicide by slitting his throat or British soldiers torture and mortally wound him. Military surgeon Benjamin Lentaigne treats him just hours before he is due to be hanged. The story goes that he is initially saved when the wound is sealed with a bandage, and he is told if he tries to talk the wound will open and he will bleed to death.

A pamphlet published in Latin by Dr. Lentaigne some years after Wolfe Tone’s official “suicide” refers to an unusual neck wound suffered by an unnamed patient which indicates that “a bullet passed through his throat.” This leads to speculation that Wolfe Tone may have been shot.

Theobald Wolfe Tone dies on November 19, 1798 at the age of 35 in Provost’s Prison, Dublin, not far from where he was born. He is buried in Bodenstown Graveyard in County Kildare, near his birthplace at Sallins, and his grave is in the care of the National Graves Association.

(Pictured: “Capture Of Wolfe Tone Date 1798,” a drawing by Mary Evans Picture Library, the UK’s leading source for historical images)


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Birth of Gerald O’Donovan, Priest & Writer

CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v62), default qualityGerald O’Donovan, Irish priest and writer born Jeremiah Donovan, is born in Kilkeel, County Down  on July 15, 1871.

O’Donovan is the son of a pier builder. He attends Ardnaree College in Killala and St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. He leaves Maynooth after ordination for the Diocese of Clonfert in 1895 and is appointed as a Roman Catholic priest to Loughrea, County Galway between 1896 and 1904. He is an enthusiastic advocate of the Gaelic League and the Irish Cooperative Association, and promotes his views in articles and lectures. His literary friends include Lady Gregory, W. B. Yeats and George Moore. He is in charge of decorating St. Brendan’s Cathedral, Loughrea in 1901, the financing provided by O’Donovan’s close friend Edward Martyn. He quit Loughrea in 1904 after the arrival of a new bishop, Thomas O’Dea.

O’Donovan moves to London but, failing to find work as a priest, he leaves the Catholic priesthood in May 1908. He becomes a subwarden at Toynbee Hall in the East End in March 1910. In October that year, he marries Florence Emily Beryl Verschoyle (1886–1968), the daughter of an Irish Protestant colonel fifteen years his junior. They have three children, two daughters and a son.

In 1913, O’Donovan publishes his first and best known novel, Father Ralph, which draws in large part on his own life. Around this time he changes his first name from Jeremiah to Gerald. Another novel titled Waiting is published in 1914. He joins the war effort in 1915, and rises to become head of the Italian section at the Ministry of Information in 1918. There he meets his secretary and future lover, English novelist Rose Macaulay.

O’Donovan publishes a few more novels after the war: How They Did It (1920), Conquest (1920), Vocations (1921), and The Holy Tree (1922). The clandestine affair with Macaulay continues for nearly two decades. In 1939, the pair are on holiday in the Lake District when they meet with a motoring accident, which damages O’Donovan’s health. He dies of cancer in Albury, Surrey three years later, on July 26, 1942. His letters to Macaulay had been destroyed the previous year when her flat in Central London was bombed during the Blitz.

In her novel The Towers of Trebizond, Macaulay features a woman character (Laurie) torn between her attraction to Christianity and her adulterous love for a married man. This is considered to reflect the author’s relationship with O’Donovan.


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Death of General Jean Joseph Amable Humbert

jean-joseph-amable-humbertGeneral Jean Joseph Amable Humbert, French soldier and French Revolution participant who leads a failed invasion of Ireland to assist Irish rebels in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, dies on January 3, 1823 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Born in the townland of La Coâre Saint-Nabord, outside Remiremont Vosges, Humbert is a sergeant in the National Guard of Lyon. He rapidly advances through the ranks to become brigadier general on April 9, 1794 and fights in the Western campaigns before being allocated to the Army of the Rhine.

In 1794, after serving in the Army of the Coasts of Brest, Humbert serves under Louis Lazare Hoche in the Army of the Rhin-et-Moselle. Charged to prepare for an expedition against Ireland, he takes command of the Légion des Francs under Hoche, sailing in the ill-fated Expédition d’Irlande against Bantry Bay in 1796, and is engaged in actions at sea against the Royal Navy. Contrary weather and enemy action force this expedition to withdraw. The trip home ends in a naval battle, the Action of 13 January 1797, during which Humbert, on the French ship Droits de l’Homme (1794), narrowly escapes death. As the ship is destroyed and sinks, hundreds of men perish, but Humbert is among the last to escape.

On his return to France, Humbert serves in the Army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, before being appointed to command the troops in another attempt to support a rising in Ireland in 1798. His command chiefly consists of infantry of the 70th demi-brigade with a few artillerymen and some cavalry of the 3rd Hussars, however by the time he arrives off the Irish coast the United Irish rising has already suffered defeat. The expedition is able to land in Ireland at Killala on Thursday August 23, 1798, meeting with initial success in the Battle of Castlebar where he routs the Irish Militia. Humbert subsequently declares a Republic of Connacht, with hopes of taking Dublin. However, Humbert’s small force is defeated at the Battle of Ballinamuck by the Irish Royal Army and he is taken as a prisoner of war by the authorities. The British send the French officers home in two frigates and then massacre their Irish supporters. Humbert makes no attempt to save the Irish who bravely supported him.

Humbert is shortly repatriated in a prisoner exchange and appointed in succession to the Armies of Mayence, Danube and Helvetia, with which he serves at the Second Battle of Zurich. He then embarks for Santo Domingo and participates in several Caribbean campaigns for Napoleon Bonaparte before being accused of plundering by General Brunet. It is also rumored that he engages in an affair with Pauline Bonaparte, the wife of his commanding officer Charles Leclerc. He is returned to France by order of General Leclerc in October 1802, for “prevarications, and liaison relationships with organisers of the inhabitants and with leaders of brigands.” A committed Republican, his displeasure at Napoleon’s Imperial pretensions lead to him being dismissed in 1803 and he retires to Morbihan in Brittany.

In 1810, after brief service in the Army of the North, Humbert emigrates to New Orleans, where he makes his acquaintance with French pirate Jean Lafitte. In 1813, Humbert joins the revolutionary Juan Bautista Mariano Picornell y Gomila in an unsuccessful attempt to foment rebellion in Spanish Mexico, but the effort fails. In 1814, Humbert again leaves New Orleans and joins the rebelling forces of Buenos Aires, briefly commanding a corps, before returning home. Humbert last fights the British at the Battle of New Orleans, as a volunteer private soldier in U.S. ranks, in the War of 1812, wearing his Napoleonic uniform. General Andrew Jackson thanks him for his assistance there after the American victory in January 1815. Thereafter Humbert lives peacefully as a schoolteacher until his death on January 3, 1823.

A monument to General Humbert depicting Mother Ireland stands on Humbert Street, Ballina, County Mayo. In 1989, sculptor Carmel Gallagher unveils a bust of General Humbert in Killala, Ireland, to mark the upcoming bicentennial of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.


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Transatlantic Cable Brought Ashore at Killala

transatlantic-cable-county-mayoA $300 million transatlantic cable is brought ashore on Ross Strand in Killala, County Mayo on August 14, 2015. The fiber optic cable will enable a super fast Internet connection and is expected to be a major economic boost for the West.

The Irish Lights vessel Granuaile begins laying the cable a few hundred metres offshore. Divers pull the cable ashore while the ship continues laying to a point about 4 km offshore. From there another vessel, the Reliance, takes over the task, relay-race like, and begins laying further out towards the United States.

The fiber optic cable is owned and operated by Irish company Aqua Comms and will run directly from Ross Strand in Killala to Long Island, New York. It has the capacity to handle up to one third of the world’s telephone calls and can cover the entire Internet traffic of Europe and the United States. The system will enable 53.8 millisecond transfer speeds across the Atlantic Ocean when it goes live in early 2016.

Silicon Republic describes Mayo as “Europe’s entry point to a vastly superior service when construction is completed by next year.” These connections are expected to create “thousands of jobs” in data centre operations. It will have a 53.8 millisecond latency and be capable of handling a third of the world’s phone calls, with over 1.6 million simultaneous Ultra HD video channels, or over 32 million LTE wireless callers.

CEO Martin Roche says, “It will also be the most secure transatlantic cable system, due to the carefully mapped route and the design built into the construction of this project.”

Taoiseach Enda Kenny says, “This new digital infrastructure is essential to help create jobs and new business opportunities across Ireland.” He also added, “This is the most important landing since [French general] Humbert in 1798.”

Local councillor Jarlath Munnelly says the project could “transform” Killala and the north Mayo region. “This is an exciting project, which I am enthusiastically supportive of. It has the potential to transform North Mayo, not just Killala, by enhancing the telecommunications infrastructure in the area, and putting Ireland and Mayo into the centre of a global network,” said the councillor.


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Birth of Joseph Stock, Bishop of Waterford & Lismore

joseph-stockJoseph Stock, Irish Protestant churchman and writer, Bishop of Killala and Achonry, and afterwards Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, is born at 1 Dame Street, Dublin, on December 22, 1740.

Stock is the son of Luke and Ann Stock. He is educated at Mr. Gast’s school in his native city and at Trinity College, Dublin. He obtains a scholarship in 1759, graduates B.A. in 1761, and gains a fellowship in 1763. Having taken orders, Stock retires on the college living of Conwall in the diocese of Raphoe.

Stock is a classical scholar, a linguist, and a man of general culture. In 1776 he publishes anonymously a life of George Berkeley, subsequently republished in the Biographia Britannica, the only memoir on Berkeley based on contemporary information.

In 1793 Stock is collated prebendary of Lismore, but resigns this preferment in 1795, on his appointment to the head-mastership of Portora Royal School. In January 1798 he succeeds John Porter as Bishop of Killala and Achonry. Shortly after his consecration, and while holding his first visitation at the castle of Killala, the bishop becomes a prisoner of the French army under General Jean Joseph Amable Humbert, when French forces land in support of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Of his experiences as a prisoner of the French he leaves a partial record in his private diary — August 23 to September 15, 1798 — which is printed in William Hamilton Maxwell‘s History of the Rebellion of 1798, and in two letters to his brother Stephen, published in the Auckland Correspondence.

In 1799 Stock publishes a more complete account of the French invasion of County Mayo in his Narrative of what passed at Killala in the Summer of 1798. By an Eyewitness. The impartiality of this work is said to have been a bar to the bishop’s advancement. He also writes The Book of the Prophet Isaiah in Hebrew and English, with Notes (Bath, 1803) and The Book of Job metrically arranged and newly translated into English, with Notes (Bath, 1805).

Stock also publishes school editions of Tacitus and Demosthenes, and is an active contributor to the controversial theology of his day. He leaves two manuscript volumes of correspondence which are preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. They consist chiefly of letters written from Killala and Waterford between 1806 and 1813 to his son Henry in Dublin.

In 1810 Stock is translated to the diocese of Waterford and Lismore, and dies at Waterford on August 13, 1813.


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The Races of Castlebar

races-of-castlebarThe Battle of Castlebar occurs on August 27, 1798 near the town of Castlebar, County Mayo, during the Irish Rebellion of 1798. A combined force of 2,000 French troops and Irish rebels rout a force of 6,000 British militia in what later becomes known as the “Castlebar Races” or “Races of Castlebar.”

The long-awaited French landing to assist the Irish revolution begun by Theobald Wolfe Tone‘s Society of United Irishmen takes place five days previously on August 22, when almost 1,100 troops under the command of General Jean Joseph Amable Humbert land at Cill Chuimín Strand, County Mayo. The nearby town of Killala is quickly captured after a brief resistance by local yeomen. Following the news of the French landing, Irish volunteers began to trickle into the French camp from all over Mayo.

On August 26, leaving about 200 French regulars behind in Killala to cover his rear and line of withdrawal, Humbert takes a combined force of about 2,000 French and Irish to march on and take Castlebar. In order to avoid a head-on attack, locals advise the French of an alternative route to Castlebar through the wilds along the west of Lough Conn, which the British believe to be impassable for a modern army with attendant artillery train. When General Gerald Lake’s scouts spot the approaching enemy, the surprised British have to hurriedly change the deployment of their entire force to face the threat from this unanticipated direction.

The British have barely completed their new deployment when the Franco-Irish army appears outside the town at about 6:00 AM. The newly sited British artillery opens up on the advancing French and Irish and cut them down in droves. French officers, however, quickly identify an area of scrub and undergrowth in a defile facing the centre of the artillery line which provides some cover from the British line of fire. The French launch a bayonet charge, the ferocity and determination of which unnerve the units stationed behind the artillery. The British units begin to waver before the French reach their lines and eventually turn in panic and flee the battlefield, abandoning the gunners and artillery. A unit of cavalry and British regular infantry attempt to stand and stem the tide of panic but are quickly overwhelmed.

In the headlong flight of thousands of British militia, large quantities of guns and equipment are abandoned, among which is General Lake’s personal luggage. Although not pursued a mile or two beyond Castlebar, the British do not stop until they reach Tuam, with some units fleeing as far as Athlone in the panic. The panic is such that only the arrival of Cornwallis at Athlone prevents further flight across the River Shannon.

Although achieving a decisive victory, the losses of the French and Irish are high, with about 150 men killed, mostly to the cannonade at the start of the battle. About 80 British are killed and some 270 wounded, captured, or deserted. Following the victory, thousands of volunteers flock to join the French who also send a request to France for reinforcements and formally declare a Republic of Connacht, which lasts 3 days and collapses when the French depart.

On September 5, the British forces are again defeated at Collooney however, after that, the rebellion quickly folds. More troops gather and by the Battle of Ballinamuck on September 8, their strength is over 15,000. Ballinamuck is the end for General Humbert, who hands in his surrender. The Irish rebels fight on briefly until scattered. Killala is re-taken on September 12. More French warships sail for Ireland, but are decisively defeated by the Royal Navy near Tory Island. With that the 1798 rebellion ends. The captured French soldiers are transferred to England and eventually repatriated. The French officers of Irish origin are hanged in Dublin with the Irish rebels.