Robinson serves in the role of General Secretary of the DUP from 1975, a position he holds until 1979 and which affords him the opportunity to exert unprecedented influence within the fledgeling party. In 1977, he is elected as a councillor for the Castlereagh Borough Council in Dundonald, County Down, and in 1979, he becomes one of the youngest Members of Parliament (MP) when he is narrowly elected for Belfast East. He holds this seat until his defeat by Naomi Long in 2010, making him the longest-serving Belfast MP since the Acts of Union 1800.
In January 2010, following a scandal involving his wife Iris (née Collins), Robinson temporarily hands over his duties as First Minister to Arlene Foster under the terms of the Northern Ireland Act 2006. Following a police investigation, which recommends that he should not be prosecuted following allegations made by the BBC in relation to the scandal, he resumes his duties as First Minister. The Official Assembly Commissioner’s Investigation and Report clears Robinson of any wrongdoing.
In September 2015, Robinson again stands aside to allow Arlene Foster to become acting First Minister after his bid to adjourn the assembly is rejected. His action is a response to a murder for which a member of Sinn Féin, a party in the Northern Ireland Executive, had been questioned. He resumes his duties on October 20, 2015. On November 19, 2015, he announces that he will be stepping down as First Minister and as leader of the DUP. He subsequently steps down as First Minister on January 11, 2016 and is now fully retired from frontline politics.
Robinson is the author of a number of books and pamphlets on local politics and history including: Capital Punishment for Capital Crime (1974), Savagery and Suffering (1975), Ulster the Facts (1981), Self-Inflicted (1981), A War to be Won (1983), It’s Londonderry (1984), Carson – Man of Action (1984), Ulster in Peril (1984), Their Cry was no Surrender (1986), Hands Off the UDR (1990), Sinn Féin – A Case for Proscription (1993), The Union Under Fire (1995), Give Me Liberty (no date), Ulster—the Prey (no date).
Acheson is born around 1744-45. He is the eldest son of Archibald Acheson, 1st Viscount Gosford, and his wife, the former Mary Richardson. His paternal grandfather is Sir Arthur Acheson, 5th Baronet, and his maternal grandfather is John Richardson of Rich Hill. His father succeeds to the baronetcy in 1748 upon the death of his father, and is subsequently created Baron Gosford in 1776 and Viscount Gosford in 1785.
In 1774, Acheson marries Millicent Pole, daughter of Lieutenant-GeneralEdward Pole, who is descended from the Poles of Radbourne Hall in Derbyshire, and Olivia (née Walsh) Pole, a daughter and heiress of John Walsh of Ballykilcavan. The have seven children, two of whom die at a young age.
“It is no secret that a persecution is now raging in this country… the only crime is… profession of the Roman Catholic faith. Lawless banditti (Orange Order) have constituted themselves judges… and the sentence they have denounced… is nothing less than a confiscation of all property, and an immediate banishment.”
Upon the death of his father in 1790, Acheson succeeds to the viscountcy. He is subsequently created Earl of Gosford in February 1806.
Acheson dies on January 14, 1807, at Bath, Somerset, England. His widow, Lady Gosford, dies on November 1, 1825.
(Pictured: “Arthur Acheson (c.1742–1807), 2nd Viscount, 1st Earl of Gosford,” oil on canvas by Gilbert Stuart)
Browne grows up in the Bogside area of Derry. The Browne family also lives in Athlone and Ballinrobe for a period of time. His mother Mary Therese (née Cooney) is born in 1885 in Hollymount, County Mayo. His father Joseph Brown, an Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) sergeant, later works as an inspector for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and, partly as a result of this work, all of the Browne family becomes infected with tuberculosis. Both parents die of the disease during the 1920s. His father is the first to die, leaving only £100 behind to support a wife and seven children. Fearing that if she and the children remain in Ireland they will be forced into a workhouse, Mary sells all their possessions and takes the family to London. Within two days of their arrival, Mary is dead, later buried in a pauper’s grave. Of her seven children, six contract tuberculosis. Noël is only one of two Browne children to survive into adulthood after those bouts with TB.
In 1929, Browne is admitted free of charge to St. Anthony’s, a preparatory school in Eastbourne, England. He then wins a scholarship to Beaumont College, the Jesuitpublic school near Old Windsor, Berkshire, where he befriends Neville Chance, a wealthy boy from Dublin. Neville’s father, the eminent surgeon Arthur Chance, subsequently pays Browne’s way through medical school at Trinity College Dublin.
In 1940, while still a student, Browne suffers a serious relapse of tuberculosis. His treatment at a sanatorium in Midhurst, Sussex is paid for by the Chance family. He recovers, passes his medical exams in 1942, and starts his career as a medical intern at Dr. Steevens’ Hospital in Dublin, where he works under Bethel Solomons. He subsequently works in numerous sanatoria throughout Ireland and England, witnessing the ravages of the disease. He soon concludes that politics is the only way in which he can make an attack on the scourge of tuberculosis.
The poverty and tragedy that had shaped Browne’s childhood deeply affects him. He considers both his survival and his level of education a complete fluke, a stroke of random chance that saved him when he was seemingly destined to die unknown and in poverty like the rest of his family. He finds this completely distasteful and is moved to enter politics as a means to ensure no one else would suffer the same fate that had befallen his family.
A ‘White Paper’ on proposed healthcare reforms had been prepared by the previous government, and results in the 1947 Health Act. In February 1948, Browne becomes Minister for Health and starts the reforms advocated by the Paper and introduced by the Act.
The health reforms coincide with the development of a new vaccine and of new drugs (e.g., BCG and penicillin) that help to treat a previously untreatable group of medical conditions. Browne introduces mass free screening for tuberculosis sufferers and launches a huge construction program to build new hospitals and sanitoria, financed by the income and accumulated investments from the Department of Health-controlled Hospital Sweeps funds. This, along with the introduction of Streptomycin, helps dramatically reduce the incidence of tuberculosis in Ireland.
As Minister for Health Browne comes into conflict with the bishops of the Catholic Church and the medical profession over the Mother and Child Scheme. This plan, also introduced by the 1947 Health Act, provides for free state-funded healthcare for all mothers and children aged under 16, with no means test, a move which is regarded as radical at the time in Ireland, but not in the rest of Europe. Virtually all doctors in private practice oppose the scheme, because it would undermine the “fee for service” model on which their income depended.
The Church hierarchy, which controls many hospitals, vigorously opposes the expansion of “socialised medicine” in the Irish republic. They claim that the Mother and Child Scheme interferes with parental rights, and fear that the provision of non-religious medical advice to mothers will lead to birth control contrary to Catholic teaching. They greatly dislike Browne, seeing him as a “Trinity Catholic,” one who has defied the Church’s ruling that the faithful should not attend Trinity College Dublin, which had been founded by Protestants and for many years did not allow Catholics to study there.
Under pressure from bishops, the coalition government backs away from the Mother and Child Scheme and forces Browne’s resignation as Minister for Health. Following his departure from government, he embarrasses his opponents by arranging for The Irish Times to publish TaoiseachJohn A. Costello‘s and MacBride’s correspondence with the Catholic hierarchy, which details their capitulation to the bishops.
The controversy over the Mother and Child Scheme leads to the fall of the coalition government in which Browne had served as a Minister. But Church opposition to socialised medicine continues under the subsequent Fianna Fáil-led government. The hierarchy does not accept a no-means-test mother-and-infant scheme even when Fianna Fáil reduces the age limit from sixteen years to six weeks, and the government again backs down.
After his resignation as Minister for Health, Browne leaves Clann na Poblachta, but is re-elected to the Dáil as an Independent TD from Dublin South-East in the subsequent election.
Browne joins Fianna Fáil in 1953, but loses his Dáil seat at the 1954 Irish general election. He fails to be selected as a candidate for the 1957 Irish general election and he resigns from the party. He is re-elected at that election for Dublin South-East as an Independent TD.
In 1977 Browne is the first Irish parliamentarian to call for law reforms in regards to homosexuality, which is illegal at the time, and in 1979 is one of the few Irish politicians to attend the opening of the Hirschfeld Centre, Dublin’s first full-time LGBT community space.
In 1990, a number of left-wing representatives within the Labour Party, led by Michael D. Higgins, approach Browne and suggest that he should be the party’s candidate in the presidential election due later that year. Though in failing health, Browne agrees. However, the offer horrifies party leader Dick Spring and his close associates for two reasons. Firstly, the leadership had secretly decided to run Mary Robinson, a barrister and former senator. Secondly, many around Spring are “appalled” at the idea of running Browne, believing he has “little or no respect for the party” and is “likely in any event to self-destruct as a candidate.” When Spring informs Browne by telephone that the party’s Administrative Council has chosen Robinson over him, Browne hangs up the telephone.
Browne spends the remaining seven years of his life constantly criticising Robinson who had gone on to win the election, thus becoming the seventh President of Ireland, and who is considered highly popular during her term. During the campaign he also indicates support for the rival Fine Gael candidate, Austin Currie.
After retiring from politics, Browne moves with his wife Phyllis to Baile na hAbhann, County Galway. He dies at the age of 81 in the Regional Hospital, Galway, on May 21, 1997. He is buried in a small graveyard near Baile na hAbhann.
Twomey lives at 6 Sevastopol Street in the Falls district. Known as “Thumper” owing to his short temper and habit of banging his fist on tables, he receives little education and is a bookmaker‘s “runner.” His father is a volunteer in the 1920s. In Belfast he lives comfortably with his wife, Rosie, whom he marries in 1946. Together they have sons and daughters.
Twomey begins his involvement with the Irish Republican Army in the 1930s and is interned in Northern Ireland during the 1940s on the prison ship HMS Al Rawdah and later in Crumlin Road Jail in Belfast. Rosie, his wife, is also held prisoner at the women prison, Armagh Jail, in Northern Ireland. He opposes the left-wing shift of Cathal Goulding in the 1960s, and in 1968, helps set up the breakaway Andersonstown Republican Club, later the Roddy McCorley Society.
In 1969, Twomey is prominent in the establishment of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. By 1972, he is Officer Commanding (OC) of the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade when it launches its bomb campaign of the city, including Bloody Friday when nine people are killed. During the 1970s, the leadership of the Belfast Brigade of the IRA is largely in the hands of Twomey and Ivor Bell.
In March 1973, Twomey is first appointed IRA Chief of Staff after the arrest of Joe Cahill. He remains in this position until his arrest in October 1973 by the Garda Síochána. Three weeks later, on October 31, 1973, the IRA organises the helicopter escape of Twomey and his fellow IRA members J. B. O’Hagan and Kevin Mallon, when an active service unit hijacks and forces the pilot at gunpoint to land the helicopter in the training yard of Mountjoy Prison. After his escape, he returns to his membership of IRA Army Council.
By June/July 1974, Twomey is IRA Chief of Staff for a second time. He takes part in the Feakle talks between the IRA and Protestant clergymen in December 1974. In the IRA truce which follows in 1975, he is largely unsupportive and wants to fight on in what he sees as “one big push to finish it once and for all.”
IRA informer Sean O’Callaghan claims that on January 5, 1976, Twomey and Brian Keenan give the go-ahead for the sectarian Kingsmill massacre, when ten unarmed Ulster Protestant workmen are executed by the Provisional IRA in retaliation for a rash of loyalist killings of Catholics in the area. It is Keenan’s view, O’Callaghan claims, that “The only way to knock the nonsense out of the Prods is to be ten times more savage.”
Twomey is dedicated to paramilitarism as a means of incorporating Northern Ireland into the Republic of Ireland. In an interview with French television on July 11, 1977, he declares that although the IRA had waged a campaign for seven years at that point, it can fight on for another 70 against the British state in Northern Ireland and in England. He supports the bombing of wealthy civilian targets, which he justifies on class lines. On October 29, 1977, for example, a no-warning bomb at an Italian restaurant in Mayfair kills one diner and wounds 17 others. Three more people are killed in similar blasts in Chelsea and Mayfair the following month. He says, “By hitting Mayfair restaurants, we were hitting the type of person that could bring pressure to bear on the British government.”
In December 1977, Twomey is captured in Sandycove, Dublin, by the Garda Síochána, who had been tipped off by Belgian police about a concealed arms shipment, to be delivered to a bogus company with an address in the area. They swoop on a house in Martello Terrace to discover Twomey outside in his car, wearing his trademark dark glasses. After a high-speed pursuit, he is recaptured in the centre of Dublin. The Gardaí later find documents in his possession outlining proposals for the structural reorganisation of the IRA according to the cell system. His arrest ends his tenure as IRA chief of staff. In the 1986 split over abstentionism, Twomey sides with the Gerry Adams leadership and remains with the Provisionals.
After a long illness from a heart condition, Twomey dies in Dublin on September 12, 1989. He is buried in the family plot in Milltown Cemetery, Belfast. His funeral is attended by about 2,000 people.
The Rebellion comes about because of the resentment felt by the Irish Catholics, both Gael and Old English, in regards to the loss of their lands to Protestant settlers from England and Scotland.
Irish Catholics are frightened by reports that the Covenanter army in Scotland is considering an invasion of Ireland in order to eradicate the Catholic religion. At the same time, there is also a threat of invasion by Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans who are at war against King Charles I. It is hoped that the King would redress the complaints of the Catholics and halt or even reverse the policy of plantation. It is not an act of rebellion against the Royal domain.
The uprising is lead by Rory O’ Moore from Leix, with Sir Phelim Roe O’ Neill and his brother Turlough of Tyrone, the Maguires of Fermanagh, the Magennis, O’ Reilly and the MacMahons. They plan to begin the rebellion on October 23, 1641 with attacks on Dublin and various other British strongholds throughout the country. However, their plans are betrayed to the British by a native Irish convert to Protestantism, Owen O’ Connolly.
As a result of this betrayal, Dublin does not fall. However, the rebellion proceeds in the north with the towns of Dungannon, Newry, and Castleblayney, along with the fort at Charlemont falling to the rebels.
Most of the province of Ulster comes under the control of the rebel leaders. The rebel army, consisting of 30,000 men, has been instructed to take no life except in battle, to arrest the gentry and to spare the Scottish planters as they are considered kindred. For a week after the rebellion, these instructions are adhered to but many of the rebels have lost their lands to the Protestant planters and they want revenge. They attack farms and settlements, killing and turning many people away, robbing and stripping them of all their goods.
Sir Phelim O’ Neill has been himself thought to have ordered the murder of Protestants in Tyrone and Armagh. It is believed that about 12,000 people are slaughtered although contemporary reports put the death toll as much higher. It is thought that up to 30% of the Ulster planters lost their lives while 10% is the figure for the whole of Ireland.
As the rebellion progresses in Ulster there are uprisings in Leinster by November and thereafter throughout the whole of Ireland. In Munster, where many English settlers are planted, the rebels do not shed much blood but they do turn out these settlers, many of whom flee back to England.
In 1642 the Scottish Covenanters invade the North and they, in turn, take to killing Catholics in revenge for the deaths of Protestants. The Covenanter Clan Campbell of Argyll takes the opportunity to attack and slaughter the Catholic Rathlin Islanders who belong to ancient enemies, Clan Mac Donald. The Covenanters also slaughter the approximately 3,000 Catholics on Islandmagee. Catholic prisoners and traders in Newry are murdered.
This ruthless slaughtering of civilians, by both sides, is only brought under control when Owen Roe O’ Neill arrives back from exile in France to take control of the Confederate army and, with Major General Robert Monroe in charge of the Covenanter Army, continues the war under the code of conduct that they had both learned on the Continent. However, the effects of the rebellion last to the present day, especially in Ulster where sectarian divide remains strong during The Troubles.
(Pictured: Depiction of the massacre of Ulster Protestants during the 1641 rebellion, The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)
Henry Luttrell, Irish soldier known for his service in the Jacobite cause, is murdered in Dublin on October 22, 1717, a case that has never been solved. A career soldier, he serves James II in England until his overthrow in 1688. In Ireland he continues to fight for James, reaching the rank of General in the Irish Army.
Luttrell is born in 1655, the second son of Thomas Luttrell of Luttrellstown Castle in County Dublin, an Irish landowner of Catholic heritage. He spends his early life on the Continent, where he kills the so-called 3rd Viscount Purbeck in a duel at Liège.
Following the disintegration of the English Army and William’s capture of London, Luttrell goes to Ireland. He joins the Irish Army under the command of Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, which has remained loyal to James and is undergoing a major expansion. He and other Catholic officers flock to the army, while Protestants are purged. Protestant inhabitants in Ireland rise, proclaiming their loyalty to William of Orange. While an uprising at Bandon in County Cork is quickly put down, a lengthy Siege of Derry begins. He is given command of a cavalry regiment. He also sits in the Patriot Parliament called by King James, as a representative for County Carlow.
In 1689 Luttrell is made Governor of Sligo, which had recently been recaptured from the enemy by Patrick Sarsfield. He immediately sets about improving the town’s fortifications. He is a friend and supporter of Sarsfield, and backs his policy of continued resistance following the Jacobite defeat the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
Luttrell’s precipitate withdrawal with the cavalry of the left flank at the Battle of Aughrim gives rise to suspicions of disloyalty. During the Siege of Limerick, he is found to be in correspondence with the besiegers, and scarcely escapes hanging, bringing his regiment of horse over to the Williamite side after the surrender of the city. As a reward, he receives the forfeited estates of his elder brother, Simon Luttrell, including Luttrellstown, and is made a major general in the Dutch army.
Luttrell attempts to deprive his brother’s widow, Catherine, of her jointure by discreditable means, but is ultimately obliged to yield it to her.
On October 13, 1704, Luttrell marries Elizabeth Jones and has two sons: Robert Luttrell (d. 1727), and Simon Luttrell, 1st Earl of Carhampton (1713–1787).
Luttrell is shot and mortally wounded in his sedan chair on the night of October 21, 1717, on the Blind-quay in Dublin as he is proceeding from Lucas’ Coffee House on Cork-hill to his house in Stafford Street. He dies the following day, at the age of sixty-three. Despite large rewards, the murderers are never apprehended.
His grandson, Henry Luttrell, 2nd Earl of Carhampton, sells Luttrellstown Castle which the family had owned for almost 600 years in 1800. After Luttrellstown Castle is sold Luttrell’s grave is opened and the skull smashed.
(Pictured: Depiction of the Battle of Aughrim (1691) by John Mulvany (c. 1839 – 1906). Luttrell’s conduct during the 1691 battle becomes a subject of historical debate.)
Sheppard is based in Dublin for almost all of his life, having traveled widely across Europe. His wife Rosie dies in 1931, with whom he has several children. They live at Howth and 30 Pembroke Road in central Dublin.
From 1902 to 1937 Sheppard teaches sculpture at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. His annual stipend is £250 but for this he only has to lecture three mornings a week, allowing him plenty of time for work on commissioned projects. One of his most famous students is the sculptor Kathleen Cox.
The Dying Cuchulain is considered Sheppard’s masterpiece and an important work of Irish art. It is a bronze figure of the mythological warrior-hero Cuchulain, who continued to fight against his enemies while gravely wounded and tied to a tree. It is created in 1911 and later chosen by Éamon de Valera in 1935 as the national memorial to the 1916 Easter Rising. It can still be viewed today in the General Post Office (GPO), O’Connell Street, Dublin.
Sheppard is generally critical of the low standards of sculpture in Ireland: “For the last sixty years or so thousands of figures and groups have been executed in Dublin for ecclesiastical purposes, and, with one or two exceptions … was not up to a reasonable standard. The making of a work of art hardly entered into it at all. The sculptor, well trained and properly encouraged, should collaborate with the architect.”
Sheppard is in the minority of Irish Protestants who support independence, starting with support for the Irish Parliamentary Party in the 1880s, when he is an art student.
In 1890–1910 Sheppard is a part of the Celtic Revival movement, and, from his works such as Inis Fáil, is admired by his student William Pearse. Through him he meets his brother Patrick Pearse who later helps launch the Easter Rising in 1916. While most of the Revival’s artists are writers, playwrights and poets, Sheppard can claim to be the main sculptor working on themes similar to theirs.
After the Irish War of Independence (1919–21) Sheppard says, “They thought me too old to fight but I have tried to help in other ways. My politics are simple. I have always thought that this country should be a free country.” His opinions are not overly dogmatic, considering his work on the war memorials in 1920.
In the mid-1920s the first series of Irish Free State coinage is planned, and is finally launched in 1928. Sheppard is one of the designers short-listed but his designs are not accepted.
After his retirement in 1937 from the National College of Art, the now renamed Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, he is appointed in 1938 by the Minister for Education to the College’s standing committee. He is also made a judge in the Royal Dublin Society art competition in 1939 and 1940.
Sheppard dies on September 14, 1941, in Dublin and is buried at Old St. Fintan’s Cemetery, Sutton, Dublin. There is a small retrospective exhibition of fourteen of his works at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1942. There are portraits of Sheppard by George William Russell (Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane) and Sir William Orpen (NGI), and photographic portraits in the Sheppard collection, National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, where his papers are located.
Frank Ryan, politician, journalist, intelligence agent and paramilitary activist, is born in the townland of Bottomstown, Elton, County Limerick, on September 11, 1902. A fascinating, somewhat mythical figure, he lives during turbulent times when Ireland finally disposes of tyrannical British rule in Ireland and becomes an icon for socialist republicans in Europe during the 1930s and 40s.
Ryan fights on the Anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War (1922-23), and is wounded and interned. In November 1923 he is released and returns to UCD. He secures his degree in Celtic Studies and further secures the editorship of An Phoblacht (The Republic), the newspaper of the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA).
The split in the Irish independence party, Sinn Féin, results in regular fist fights between pro and anti-Treaty forces. Cumann na nGaedhael, the pro-Treaty political party in government, recruits the Army Comrades Association (Blueshirts) under former Garda CommissionerEoin O’Duffy to protect their members from anti-Treaty IRA protesters at annual Armistice Day and Wolfe Tone commemorations. Ryan is a forceful orator at these events and is frequently arrested and beaten up by the Gardai. The fractious politics results in Dáil members Sean Hales and Kevin O’Higgins being shot dead in public.
The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) inspires Ryan to lead the first contingent of Irish volunteers to support the Popular Front government of Republican Spain. A brave and inspiring leader, he serves with Italian and German Republican divisions. He is seriously wounded at the Battle of Jarama in February 1937. Following recuperation in Ireland, he is appointed adjutant to republican General José Miaja. During the Aragon Offensive he is captured with 150 of his men in April 1938 and sentenced to death. Irish President, Éamon de Valera, intervenes with General Francisco Franco and Ryan’s sentence is commuted to thirty years. His health suffers severely in Burgos Prison, Spain during his two year incarceration.
Franco refuses to release Ryan because he is considered his most dangerous prisoner. In August 1940 he is transferred to Berlin, where he is re-united with IRA Chief of StaffSeán Russell. An attempt to return both men to Ireland by U-boat ends with Russell dying from a perforated ulcer. Ryan voluntarily returns to Germany where he serves as the unofficial IRA ambassador for German intelligence. Irishman Francis Stuart, son-in-law of Maud Gonne, who writes some of William Joyce’s propaganda, takes good care of Ryan until his untimely death at a hospital in Loschwitz in Dresden on June 10, 1944.
Ryan’s funeral in Dresden is attended by Elizabeth Clissmann, wife of Helmut Clissmann, and Francis Stuart. Clissmann eventually forwards details of Ryan’s fate to Leopold Kerney in Madrid. According to Stuart and Clissmann, the cause of death is pleurisy and pneumonia.
In 1963, historian Enno Stephan locates Ryan’s grave in Dresden. Three volunteers of the International Brigades, Frank Edwards, Peter O’Connor and Michael O’Riordan travel to East Germany as a guard of honour to repatriate Ryan’s remains in 1979. On June 21, 1979, his remains arrive in Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church, his local church when he lived in Dublin. The church is packed with all shades of Republican and left-wing opinion, as well as those from his past such as the Stuarts, the Clissmanns, Peadar O’Donnell, George Gilmore, and ex-comrades and sympathizers from all over the world. The cortège on its way to Glasnevin Cemetery halts at the GPO in memory of the dead of the 1916 Easter Rising. His coffin is borne to the grave in Glasnevin Cemetery by Irish veterans of the Spanish Civil War, Frank Edwards, Peter O’Connor, Michael O’Riordan and Terry Flanagan. Con Lehane delivers the funeral oration while a piper plays “Limerick’s Lamentation.” He is buried next to Éamonn Mac Thomáis.
Ryan leads a vicarious life in pursuit of human rights, socialism and republicanism. His life story remains more colourful than fiction.
Paisley is born on April 6, 1926, in Armagh, County Antrim. He 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. He 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.
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. He and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness become First Minister and deputy First Minister respectively in May 2007. He steps down as First Minister and DUP leader in May 2008 and leaves politics in 2011. He 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. A New York Times obituary 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.”
As a young man, O’Connor embraces the Republican movement early on as he is encouraged by the American Revolution overseas. After his oldest brother Daniel gets into debt, his brother Roger buys out his inheritance. The family’s political and financial conflicts are only deepened when their sister Anne commits suicide, after having been forbidden by the family from marrying a Catholic man she was in love with.
In 1796, O’Connor joins the Society of United Irishmen and determines, on its platform, to contest what had been his uncle Lord Longueville’s Irish parliamentary seat in Antrim. In January 1797, to the “free electors” of the county he commends the “entire abolition of religious distinctions” and the “establishment of a National Government,” while protesting the “invasion” of the country by English and Scottish troops and the continuation of the continental war. Arrests, including his own in February for seditious libel, frustrate his attempts to canvass. With Lord Edward FitzGerald and others in the leadership in Dublin his thoughts turn to securing “fraternal” French support for a revolutionary insurrection.
O’Connor is released in 1802 under the condition of “banishment,” He travels to Paris, where he is regarded as the accredited representative of the United Irishmen by Napoleon who, in February 1804, appoints him General of Division in the French army. General Louis-Alexandre Berthier, Minister of War, directs that O’Connor is to join the expeditionary army intended for the invasion of Ireland at Brest. When the plan falls through, O’Connor retires from the army.
In 1807, although more than twice her age, O’Connor marries Alexandrine Louise Sophie de Caritat de Condorcet, known as Eliza, the daughter of the scholar the Marquis de Condorcet and Sophie de Condorcet. Following his marriage he borrows money from fellow exile William Putnam McCabe to acquire a country residence. His tardiness in repaying the debt to McCabe, whose own investments into cotton spinning in Rouen had failed, results in a lawsuit. Cathal O’Bryne suggests that the debt is behind O’Connor’s later suggestion to Richard Robert Madden that McCabe had been a double agent, a charge to which, Madden notes, the French government lends no credence.
O’Connor offers his services to Napoleon during the Hundred Days. After Napoleon’s defeat he is allowed to retire, becoming a naturalised French citizen in 1818. He supports the 1830 revolution which creates the July Monarchy, publishing a defence of events in the form of an open letter to General Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. After the revolution he becomes mayor of Le Bignon-Mirabeau. The rest of his life is spent composing literary works on political and social topics. He and his wife continue the efforts of her mother, who is herself an accomplished translator of Thomas Paine and Adam Smith, to publish her father’s works in twelve volumes between 1847 and 1849.
O’Connor’s wife give birth to five children, three sons and two daughters, almost all of whom predecease him. Only one son, Daniel, marries and has issue. Daniel marries Ernestine Duval du Fraville, a daughter of Laurent-Martin Duval, Baron Duval du Fraville, in 1843. She dies at Cannes in 1877.
O’Connor dies on April 25, 1852. His widow dies in 1859.
O’Connor’s descendants continue to serve as officers in the French army and still reside at Château Dubignon. Through his only surviving son, Daniel, he is a grandfather of two boys, Arthur O’Connor (1844–1909), who serves in the French army, and Fernand O’Connor (1847–1905), a Brigade General who serves in Africa and is made a Knight of the Legion of Honour. His grandson, Arthur, marries Marguerite de Ganay (1859–1940), a daughter of Emily and Etienne, Marquis de Ganay, in 1878. They have two daughters, Elisabeth O’Connor, the wife of Alexandre de La Taulotte, and Brigitte Emilie Fernande O’Connor (1880–1948), who in 1904 marries the Comte François de La Tour du Pin (1878–1914), who is killed ten years later at the First Battle of the Marne.
seamus dubhghaill 