Esther Vanhomrigh, Irish woman of Dutch descent and a longtime lover and correspondent of Jonathan Swift, dies in Celbridge, County Kildare, on June 2, 1723. Swift’s letters to her are published after her death. Her fictional name “Vanessa” is created by Swift by taking Van from her surname, Vanhomrigh, and adding Esse, a pet form of her first name, Esther.
Vanhomrigh is born in Dublin on February 14, 1688, the eldest of four children of Bartholomew Van Homrigh, a merchant of Amsterdam and afterwards of Dublin, who is appointed commissary of the stores by King William III upon his expedition into Ireland. He serves as Lord Mayor of Dublin from 1697–98. Her mother, also named Esther, is the daughter of John Stone, an Irish commissioner of revenue. She grows up at Celbridge Abbey in County Kildare.
Vanhomrigh’s father dies in 1703, and his widow moves her family to London in 1707. She becomes acquainted with Swift in December of that year while the family is en route for London, at Dunstable, and it is here that their intense 17-year relationship begins. She is 22 years younger than Swift, and it is obvious from the beginning that he admires her for her rugged qualities, as he does not admire very delicate women. She is said “not to be a beauty,” although it is difficult to be sure about this since no contemporary portrait of her exists (the famous 1868 Millais portrait is a work of artistic imagination). Swift later serves as her tutor. After her mother dies in 1714, she follows Swift to Ireland, and returns to Celbridge Abbey, but she is desperately miserable there.
Their relationship is fraught. It is broken up after 17 years by Swift’s relationship with another woman, Esther Johnson, whom he calls “Stella,” in 1723. Swift has known Stella since about 1690, when she is a little girl in the household of his employer Sir William Temple; their relationship is intense and it is possible that they secretly married in 1716. Vanhomrigh is thought to have asked Swift not to see Stella again, and he apparently refuses, thus putting an end to their relationship.
Vanhomrigh never recovers from his rejection and dies on June 2, 1723, likely from tuberculosis contracted from nursing her sister Mary, who had died of the same disease in 1720, as had their mother before her. Some accuse Swift of inadvertently causing her death.
Vanhomrigh’s father had left her well provided for, but she is burdened by debts accumulated by her mother and her spendthrift brother Bartholomew. In her will, she names the barristerRobert Marshall and George Berkeley, the celebrated philosopher and future Bishop of Cloyne, executors and joint residuary legatees of her estate, although she knew neither man well. Due to the debts, a protracted lawsuit ensues and a large part of the estate is lost in legal costs. It is widely reported that she had made it a condition of the inheritance that her executors publish all her correspondence with Swift, but in fact, no such stipulation seems to have been made.
Swift, whose letters to her are published after her death, is not mentioned in her will, perhaps a final retaliation against a man whose neglect made her “live a life like a languishing death.”
Thomas Pelham, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, introduces a bill for the foundation of a Catholic college, and this is enacted by parliament. It is built to hold up to 500 students for the Catholic priesthood of whom up to 90 are to be ordained each year. It is once the largest seminary in the world.
The town of Maynooth is the seat of the FitzGeralds, Earls of Kildare. The ivy-covered tower attached to St. Mary’s Church of Ireland is all that remains of the ancient college of St. Mary of Maynooth, founded and endowed by Gerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare, and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. On October 7, 1515, Henry VIII grants licence for the establishment of a college. In 1518, the 9th Earl presents a petition to the Archbishop of Dublin, William Rokeby, for a license to found and endow a college at Maynooth, the College of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1535 the college is suppressed and its endowments and lands confiscated as part of the Reformation.
The present college is created in the 1790s against the background of the upheaval during the French Revolution and the gradual removal of the penal laws. The college is particularly intended to provide for the education of Catholic priests in Ireland, who until this Act had to go to Continental Europe for their formation and theological education. Many are educated in France, and the church and government are concerned at the Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution, and at the same time at the risk of revolutionary thinking arising from training in revolutionary France. A number of the early lecturers in Maynooth, are exiles from France. Also among the first professors is a layman, James Bernard Clinch, recommended by Edmund Burke. Also relevant is the enactment of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793.
The college is legally established on June 5, 1795, by the Maynooth College Act 1795 as The Royal College of St. Patrick, by act of the Parliament of Ireland, to provide “for the better education of persons professing the popish or Roman Catholic religion.” The college is originally established to provide a university education for Catholic lay and ecclesiastical students, the lay college is based in Riverstown House on the south campus from 1802. With the opening of Clongowes Wood College in 1814, the lay college is closed and the college functions solely as a Catholic seminary for almost 150 years.
In 1800, John Butler, 12th Baron Dunboyne, dies and leaves a substantial fortune to the college. Butler had been a Roman Catholic, and Bishop of Cork, who had embraced Protestantism in order to marry and guarantee the succession to his hereditary title. However, there are no children to his marriage, and it is alleged that he had been reconciled to the Catholic Church at his death. Were this the case, a Penal Law demands that the will is invalid, and his wealth is to pass to his family. Much litigation follows before a negotiated settlement in 1808 that leads to the establishment of a Dunboyne scholarship fund.
The land is donated by William FitzGerald, 2nd Duke of Leinster, who had argued in favour of Catholic emancipation in the Irish House of Lords. He lives nearby at Carton House and also at Leinster House. The building work is paid for by the British Government with the parliament continuing to give it an annual grant until the Irish Church Act 1869. When this law is passed the college receives a capital sum of £369,000. The trustees invest 75% of this in mortgages to Irish landowners at a yield of 4.25% or 4.75% per annum. This is considered a secure investment at the time but agitation for land reform and the depression of the 1870s erodes this security. The largest single mortgage is granted to the Earl of Granard. Accumulated losses on these transactions reaches £35,000 by 1906.
The first building to go up on the site is designed by, and named after, John Stoyte. Stoyte House, which can still be seen from the entrance to the old campus, is a well-known building to Maynooth students and stands very close to the very historic Maynooth Castle. Over the next 15 years, the site at Maynooth undergoes rapid construction so as to cater for the influx of new students, and the buildings which now border St. Joseph’s Square (to the rear of Stoyte House) are completed by 1824.
The Rev. Laurence F. Renehan (1797–1857), a noted antiquarian, church historian, and cleric, serves as president of St. Patrick’s from 1845 until 1857. Under Renehan, many of the college’s most important buildings are constructed by Augustus Pugin.
In 1876, the college becomes a constituent college of the Catholic University of Ireland, and later offers Royal University of Ireland degrees in arts and science. Even after the granting of the Pontifical Charter in 1896 the college becomes a recognised college of the National University of Ireland in 1910, and from this time its arts and science degrees are awarded by the National University of Ireland. However, during this time the Pontifical University of Maynooth continues to confer its degrees in theology, because until 1997 theology degrees are prohibited by the Royal University of Ireland and its successor the National University of Ireland.
In 1997, the Universities Act, 1997 is passed by the Oireachtas. Chapter IX of the Act provides for the creation of the separate Maynooth University. This new university is created from the college’s faculties of Arts, Celtic Studies and Philosophy, and Science.
In 1994, W. J. Smyth had been appointed to the position of Master of St. Patrick’s College Maynooth (NUI). In 1997, this position is converted into President of Maynooth University. After his 10-year term ends in 2004, he is replaced by John Hughes as president of Maynooth University and a new line of heads for the college.
By 2016, the number of resident seminarians has dropped from several hundreds to just 40 to 60. In August 2016, it is revealed that, due to frequent use of Grindr by college students, the then Archbishop of DublinDiarmuid Martin decides to transfer the students from his diocese to the Irish Pontifical College in Rome. According to Martin, “there are allegations on different sides,” one of which of an “atmosphere that was growing in Maynooth” of a “homosexual, a gay culture, that students have been using an app called Grindr,” which “would be fostering promiscuous sexuality, which is certainly not in any way the mature vision of sexuality one would expect a priest to understand.” Subsequently, the college trustees order a review of the college’s policy on social media use.
Sirr is born in Dublin Castle on November 25, 1764, the son of Major Joseph Sirr, the Town Major of Dublin from 1762 to 1767. He serves in the British Army from 1778 until 1791 and is thereafter a wine merchant. In 1792 he marries Eliza D’Arcy, the daughter of James D’Arcy. He is the father of Rev. Joseph D’Arcy Sirr, MRIA and of Henry Charles Sirr.
In 1796, upon the formation of yeomanry in Dublin, Sirr volunteers his services, and is appointed acting Town Major, and is thenceforward known as the chief agent of the Castle authorities. In 1798 he is promoted to the position of Town Major, and receives, in accordance with precedent, a residence in Dublin Castle.
Sirr is active in the efforts of the Castle to suppress the republican and insurrectionary Society of United Irishmen. In the months prior to their rising in May and June 1798, he is prominent in the arrests of Peter Finnerty, the editor of their Dublin paper, The Press, on October 31, 1797, and of their leaders Thomas Russell and the popular Lord Edward Fitzgerald. It is the capture of FitzGerald on May 19, 1798, that brings him before the public.
In 1802, in a lawsuit, Hevey v. Sirr, presided over by Lord Kilwarden, Sirr is fined £150 damages, and costs, for the assault and false imprisonment of John Hevey. His lawyer in this case refers to his “very great exertions and laudable efforts” to crush the Irish Rebellion of 1798. The opposing lawyer, John Philpot Curran, tells a long tale of a grudge held by Sirr against Hevey, the latter a prosperous businessman and a Yeoman volunteer against the Rebellion, who has happened to be in court during a treason case brought by Sirr. Hevey recognises the witness for the prosecution, describes him in court “a man of infamous character,” and convinces the jury that no credit is due to the witness. The treason case collapses. Sirr and his colleague had then subjected Hevey to wrongful arrest, imprisonment incommunicado, extortion of goods and money, and condemnation to hanging. Curran implies that these techniques are typical of the methods used by Sirr and by others to suppress the Rebellion.
On August 25, 1803, Sirr is instrumental in the arrest of Robert Emmet, in the course of who’s abortive rising the previous month in Dublin, Kilwarden had been murdered.
In 1808 the Dublin police is re-organised and Sirr’s post is abolished, but he is allowed to retain the title. Niles’ Register of March 24, 1821 remarks that “Several persons have been arrested at a public house in Dublin, by major Sirr, charged with being engaged in a treasonable meeting, and committed to prison. We thought that this old sinner, given to eternal infamy by the eloquence of Curran, had gone home.”
Sirr is an avid collector of documents and curios. He sells McCormac’s Cross and other valuable antiquities in exchange for second-rate copied paintings. The remains are given by his older son, Joseph, to Trinity College, Dublin at some time between 1841 and 1843. It now forms the Sirr Collection of the Trinity College Library, Dublin.
Henry Charles Sirr dies on January 7, 1841, in Dublin Castle. He is buried in the churchyard of St. Werburgh’s Church, while his victim, Lord Edward FitzGerald, is buried in the vaults of the same church.
On the day of the bombing, the bombers drive a car, loaded with 230 kilograms (510 lb) of fertiliser-based explosives, across the Irish border. At approximately 2:19 PM they park the vehicle outside S.D. Kells’ clothes shop in Omagh’s Lower Market Street, on the southern side of the town centre, near the crossroads with Dublin Road. They are unable to find a parking space near the intended target, the Omagh courthouse. The two male occupants arm the bomb and, upon exiting the car, walk east down Market Street towards Campsie Road.
Three telephone calls are made warning of a bomb in Omagh, using the same codeword that had been used in the Real IRA’s bomb attack in Banbridge two weeks earlier. At 2:32 PM, a warning is telephoned to Ulster Television saying, “There’s a bomb, courthouse, Omagh, Main Street, 500 lb., explosion 30 minutes.” One minute later, the office receives a second warning saying, “Martha Pope (which is the RIRA’s code word), bomb, Omagh town, 15 minutes.” The caller claims the warning on behalf of “Óglaigh na hÉireann.” One minute later, the Coleraine office of the Samaritans receives a call stating that a bomb will go off on “Main Street” about 200 yards (180 m) from the courthouse. The recipients pass the information on to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) but are claimed to be inaccurate and police inadvertently move people towards the bomb.
The car bomb detonates at 3:10 PM in the crowded shopping area. The bombing kills 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, and injures some 220 others. Twenty-one people who are in the vicinity of the vehicle die at the scene. Eight more people die on the way to or in the hospital. The death toll is higher than that of any single incident during what are considered “the Troubles.”
The bombing causes outrage both locally and internationally, spurs on the Northern Ireland peace process, and deals a severe blow to the Dissident republican campaign. The Real IRA apologises and declares a ceasefire shortly afterwards. The victims include people from many backgrounds: Protestants, Catholics, a Mormon teenager, five other teenagers, six children, a mother pregnant with twins, two Spanish tourists, and others on a day trip from the Republic of Ireland. Both unionists and Irish nationalists are killed and injured.
It is alleged that the British, Irish and U.S. intelligence agencies have information which could have prevented the bombing, most of which comes from double agents inside the Real IRA. This information is not given to the local police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). In 2008 it is revealed that British intelligence agency, Government Communications Headquarters, was monitoring conversations between the bombers as the bomb was being driven into Omagh.
A 2001 report by the Police Ombudsman says that the RUC Special Branch failed to act on prior warnings and slammed the RUC’s investigation of the bombing. The RUC has obtained circumstantial and coincidental evidence against some suspects, but it has not come up with anything to convict anyone of the bombing. Colm Murphy is tried, convicted, and then released after it is revealed that Garda Síochána forged interview notes used in the case. Murphy’s nephew, Sean Hoey, is also tried and found not guilty.
In June 2009, the victims’ families win a GB£1.6 million civil action against four defendants. In April 2014, Seamus Daly is charged with the murders of those killed, however, the case against him is withdrawn in February 2016.
seamus dubhghaill 