Blair urges Protestant waverers to keep the Good Friday Agreement alive and insists that IRA disarmament, which the pro-British unionists are demanding, is “part of the agreement.”
Britain says two monitors, former President of FinlandMartti Ahtisaari and South AfricanCyril Ramaphosa, have reported to the province’s disarmament commission. “We and the Irish government understand from the decommissioning commission that a second inspection of IRA dumps has now taken place, and they have received a report to that effect from President Ahtisaari and Mr. Ramaphosa,” a Northern Ireland Office statement says.
The IRA discloses the inspection, aimed to show that arms from its long anti-British war are no longer being used, as tension grows ahead of a crucial October 28 conference of the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). “We specifically announced that we would repeat the inspection of a number of arms dumps by third parties to confirm that our weapons are secure,” the IRA says. “We now wish to confirm that this re-inspection has taken place and thank those involved for their co-operation.”
Ramaphosa and Ahtisaari first examine arms stockpiles in June 2000.
The IRA is observing a ceasefire following a 30-year war against British rule in Northern Ireland.
U.S. PresidentBill Clinton joins Britain and Ireland in applauding the IRA’s decision that it will permit a fresh look at some of its hidden arsenal.
However, as Blair arrives three bomb alerts underline the fragility of a peace that has been shaken by sporadic attacks by armed dissidents who oppose the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. A detective escapes injury when a bomb under his car fails to explode in a carpark at Antrim, north Belfast. A police spokesman blames Protestant “loyalistparamilitaries.” Army bomb experts also deal with two “suspicious objects” found in other parts of the province, police say.
Blair’s visit is seen as a bid to garner support for First MinisterDavid Trimble, who is under pressure from within his Ulster Unionist Party over his decision to share power with Sinn Féin, even though the IRA has not disarmed.
Blair appeals to unionists ahead of their conference not to squander the accord’s hard-won political advances. He warns that disarmament will be out of reach if the coalition falls. “This is the only way forward for the future. If the Executive collapses and the Assembly then collapses, which must automatically happen, you don’t have a process at all, you don’t have decommissioning,” he tells reporters.
Confirmation of the second inspection is seen as a lift for the peace process which might ease pressure on Trimble.
UUP hardliners on Saturday, October 28, plan to urge grassroots members to back their demand for Trimble to pull out of the ruling coalition by November 30 if the IRA has not disarmed by that time. However, Trimble, at a news conference, dismisses the five-week deadline as “a crude device.”
(From: “IRA confirms arms dump inspections,” CNN.com, October 26, 2000 | Pictured: David Trimble, Seamus Mallon and Tony Blair at Stormont. Photograph: Eric Luke/The Irish Times)
Smith is born at 174 South Street, New York City, on December 30, 1873, and raised in the Fourth Ward on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He resides there for his entire life. His mother, Catherine (née Mulvihill), is the daughter of Maria Marsh and Thomas Mulvihill, who are immigrants from County Westmeath, Ireland. His father, baptised Joseph Alfred Smith in 1839, is a Civil War–veteran and the son of Emanuel Smith, an Italian marinaro.
Although Smith remains personally untarnished by corruption, he — like many other New York Democrats — is linked to the notorious Tammany Hallpolitical machine that controls New York City politics during his era. He serves in the New York State Assembly from 1904 to 1915 and holds the position of Speaker of the Assembly in 1913. He also serves as sheriff of New York County from 1916 to 1917. He is first elected governor of New York in 1918, loses his 1920 bid for re-election, and is elected governor again in 1922, 1924, and 1926. He is the foremost urban leader of the efficiency movement in the United States and is noted for achieving a wide range of reforms as the New York governor in the 1920s.
Smith is the first Roman Catholic to be nominated for president of the United States by a major party. His 1928 presidential candidacy mobilizes both Catholic and anti-Catholic voters. Many Protestants, including German AmericanLutherans and Southern Baptists, fear his candidacy, believing that the Pope in Rome would dictate his policies. He is also a committed “wet” (i.e., an opponent of Prohibition in the United States) and as New York governor, he repeals the state’s prohibition law. As a “wet,” he attracts voters who want beer, wine and liquor without having to deal with criminal bootleggers, along with voters who are outraged that new criminal gangs have taken over the streets in most large and medium-sized cities. Incumbent RepublicanSecretary of CommerceHerbert Hoover is aided by national prosperity, the absence of American involvement in war and anti-Catholic bigotry, and he defeats Smith in a landslide in 1928.
Smith then enters business in New York City and becomes involved in the construction and promotion of the Empire State Building. He seeks the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination but is defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt, his former ally and successor as governor of New York. During the Roosevelt presidency, he becomes an increasingly vocal opponent of Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Smith is an early and vocal critic of the Nazi regime in Germany. He supports the Anti-Nazi boycott of 1933 and addresses a mass-meeting at Madison Square Garden against Nazism in March 1933. His speech is included in the 1934 anthology Nazism: An Assault on Civilization. In 1938, he takes to the airwaves to denounce Nazi brutality in the wake of Kristallnacht. His words are published in The New York Times article “Text of the Catholic Protest Broadcast” of November 17, 1938.
Like most New York City businessmen, Smith enthusiastically supports American military involvement in World War II. Although he is not asked by Roosevelt to play any role in the war effort, he is an active and vocal proponent of FDR’s attempts to amend the Neutrality Act in order to allow “Cash and Carry” sales of war equipment to be made to the British. He speaks on behalf of the policy in October 1939, to which FDR responds directly: “Very many thanks. You were grand.”
Smith is memorialized by The Alfred E. Smith Foundation, founded by CardinalFrancis Spellman. Today it is a significant fund raiser for charity. Each election year, presidential candidates are expected to attend, make witty remarks, and profound commentary about Smith. In 2008, then candidate Barack Obama speaks eloquently of “a man who fought for many years to give Americans nothing more than fair shake and a chance to succeed. He touched the lives of millions as a result.”
(Pictured: Official Gubernatorial portrait of Alfred E. “Al” Smith by Douglas Volk)
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.
Janet McNeill, prolific Irish novelist and playwright, is born on September 14, 1907, in Dublin. Author of more than 20 children’s books, as well as adult novels, plays, and two opera libretti, she is best known for her children’s comic fantasy series My Friend Specs McCann.
McNeill is born to Rev. William McNeill, a minister at Adelaide Road Presbyterian Church, and Jeannie Patterson (Hogg) McNeill. In 1913, the family moves to Birkenhead, Merseyside, England, where her father becomes minister at Trinity Road Church. She attends public school in Birkenhead and studies classics at the University of St. Andrews in St. Andrews, Scotland, completing a MA degree in 1929. While at university, she is involved in writing and acting with the College Players. In 1924, the family returns to Ireland due to her father’s failing health, and Rev. McNeill becomes the minister of a village church in Rostrevor, County Down, Northern Ireland, while Janet joins the Belfast Telegraph as a secretary.
In 1933, McNeill marries Robert Alexander, the chief engineer in the Belfast city surveyor’s department, and the couple settles in Lisburn, where they raise their four sons. One son is the zoologist Professor Robert McNeill Alexander, CBE, FRS. Though she plans to write her first novel early on, she finds it impossible to write seriously until the children grow up, saying, “It was four years before I had a baby and twenty-five before I produced the book.”
In 1946, McNeill wins a prize in a BBC competition for her play Gospel Truth. She begins writing radio dramas, which are broadcast by the BBC. She suffers an intracerebral hemorrhage in 1953. During her recovery, she begins writing novels both for adults and children, producing a large body of work between 1955 and 1964. Her popular children’s character, Specs McCann, who debuts in a 1955 book and makes several reappearances, also inspires a newspaper cartoon strip by Rowel Friers, a Belfast artist and friend of hers.
Her 1944 novel The Maiden Dinosaur is her first to be published in the United States, twenty-two years later. She also has three writing credits on television with series and plays. Several of her plays are staged at the Ulster Group Theatre.
In 1964, McNeill’s husband retires, and the couple moves to Bristol, South West England. She writes one more novel after she leaves Northern Ireland but continues to write children’s books for another decade. During this time, she writes her only children’s play, published as Switch On, Switch Off, and other plays (1968), which presents different moral themes in scenes set in “domestic and workplace settings in contemporary England.” Her children’s book The Battle of St. George Without is televised by the BBC in 1969.
In her adult fiction, McNeill focuses on the lifestyle and social mores of Belfast and Ulster in the mid-twentieth century. Her characters are primarily “menopausal, middle-aged, middle-class Protestants.” She depicts the “dreary, Ulster religiosity” of ministers and laymen alike, and the class conventions and sexual repression of middle-aged, upper-middle-class women. The theme of suppressing self-identity and goals, both by wives in deference to their husbands and parents on behalf of their children, pervades her adult novels.
McNeill has a number of health problems and dies in Bristol in October 1994.
Harty is born on August 11, 1867, in Knocknagurteeny, Murroe, County Limerick, the son of Francis Harty and his wife, Johana (née Ryan). He is educated locally and at the Jesuits‘ Crescent College, Limerick. In 1884, he goes to St. Patrick’s College, Thurles, and two years later proceeds to Maynooth College, where he trains for the priesthood. After ordination at Clonliffe College, Dublin, on May 20, 1894, he returns to Maynooth. The following year he is appointed to the chair of philosophy and theology there. However, he defers this for a year while he attends lectures at the Ecclesiastical university in Rome, as one of two professors who has been granted the new privilege of leave of absence on full salary to study abroad.
Back at Maynooth Harty is a prominent member of staff. In 1906, he co-founds the Irish Theological Quarterly, of which he is for many years editor, and is also editor for a time of the Irish Ecclesiastical Record. His contributions to these and other periodicals are numerous and include an essay on the “Sacredness of fetal life” for the Irish Theological Quarterly in 1906. As a founder member of the Maynooth manuscripts publication committee, which runs from 1906 to 1915, he helps oversee the publication of the edition of the Black Book of Limerick (1907) by his colleague James MacCaffrey and of some impressive student publications, including Gadaidhe Géar na Geamh-oidche (1915), a volume of tales from the Fenian cycle from manuscripts in the library. He is appointed senior professor of moral theology but ceases teaching after he is consecrated Archbishop of Cashel on January 18, 1914.
Harty is early involved with the Gaelic Athletic Association – he had been a hurler in his youth – and is a strong supporter of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP). In late 1915 he furnishes John Redmond with a letter of support, and a few months later is denouncing the Easter Rising and congratulating the people of Cashel for abstaining from insurrection. Later that year he is involved in a French propaganda drive to boost the war effort in Ireland. As one of the four bishop delegates to the 1917 Irish Convention, he speaks against a Methodist delegate’s call for mixed education. Criticising the Protestant educational system in Belfast, he claims the Catholic church has a right to teach its own children, and effectively closes down the discussion. By April 1918 he has moved toward tacit acceptance of Sinn Féin and is at the forefront of the anti-conscription campaign. In a speech he calls conscription unjust and hypocritical and calls for “every man with a drop of Irish blood in his veins” to sign the protest against it.
On the establishment of the Free State, Harty preaches support for Cumann na nGaedheal, but by the 1930s is closer to Éamon de Valera, and is a strong advocate of protectionism, which he feels will ensure a self-sufficient Ireland of traditional values. In 1933, he applauds the tax set on imported daily papers, as he believes English papers are corrupting the young. At the golden jubilee of the GAA the following year he makes a speech in Cashel calling for Irish industries, Irish music, and Irish dances. As president of the congress committee, he is a key organiser of the massive Eucharistic Congress of 1932. His other great concerns are the foreign missions and the promotion of Catholic literature – he is president of the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland. His practical work for his diocese includes heading a deputation to the minister for agriculture in October 1932 to press Thurles’s claims for the new sugar beet factory. It opens there in December 1934.
Although tall, athletic, and fond of open air, Harty is for many years in poor health and from about 1933 petitions the Holy See for a coadjutor-archbishop. This finally comes about in 1942 when Bishop Jeremiah Kissane of Waterford comes to Cashel as his dean and coadjutor. Four years later Harty dies at his residence in Thurles on September 11, 1946, and is buried at the Cathedral of the Assumption, Thurles. He is survived by a brother and a sister. The GAA ground in his native Murroe is named after him.
(From: “Harty, John” by Bridget Hourican, Dictionary of Irish Biography, www. dib.ie, October 2009)
The O’Neills and O’Donnells retain their lands and titles, although with much-diminished extent and authority. However, the countryside is laid bare in a campaign of destruction in 1602, which induces famine in 1603. Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, is pardoned under the terms of the Treaty of Mellifont in March 1603 and submits to the crown.
When King James VI and I takes the English throne in 1603, he quickly proceeds to issue pardons for the Irish lords and their rebel forces. Already reigning as king of Scotland, he has a better understanding of the advantages from working with local chiefs in the Scottish Highlands. However, as in other Irish lordships, the 1603 peace involves O’Neill losing substantial areas of land to his cousins and neighbors, who would be granted freeholds under the English system, instead of the looser arrangements under the former Brehon law system. This is not a new policy but is a well-understood and longstanding practice in the Tudor conquest of Ireland.
On September 10, 1602, the Prince of Tyrconnell has already died, allegedly assassinated, in Spain, and his brother succeeds him as 25th Chieftain of the O’Donnell clan. He is later granted the Earldom of Tyrconnell by King James I on September 4, 1603, and restored to a somewhat diminished scale of territories in Tyrconnell on February 10, 1604.
In 1605, the new Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir Arthur Chichester, begins to encroach on the former freedoms of the two Earls and The Maguire, enforcing the new freeholds, especially that granted in North Ulster to the O’Cahan chief. The O’Cahan had formerly been important subjects of the O’Neills and required protection; in turn, Chichester wants to reduce O’Neill’s authority. O’Cahan has also wanted to remove himself from O’Neill’s overlordship. An option is to charge O’Neill with treason if he does not comply with the new arrangements. The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in the same year makes it harder for Catholics to appear loyal to both the crown and the papacy. A lengthy legal battle however finds in O’Neill’s favor.
By 1607, O’Neill’s allies the Maguires and the Earl of Tyrconnell are finding it hard to maintain their prestige on lower incomes. They plan to seek Spanish support before news of the Battle of Gibraltar arrives. When their ship drops anchor, O’Neill seems to have joined them on impulse. He had three options:
Flee with his friends and hope for a reinvasion by Spain
Go to London and stay at court until his grievances are redressed
Do nothing and live on a reduced income as a large landowner in Ulster
Fearing arrest, they choose to flee to Continental Europe, where they hope to recruit an army for the invasion of Ireland with Spanish help. However, earlier in 1607 the main Spanish fleet in Europe had been defeated by the Dutch in the Battle of Gibraltar. But the oft-repeated theory that they are all about to be arrested contradicts writer Tadhg Ó Cianáin, the main historical source on the Flight, who says at the start of his account that O’Neill heard news of the ship anchored at Rathmullen on Thursday September 6, and “took his leave of the Lord Justice (Chichester) the following Saturday.” They had been meeting at Slane for several days, and there is no proof that warrants for his arrest have been drawn up, nor is it a hurried departure.
Also, as the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) has been ended by the Treaty of London in 1604, King Philip III of Spain wants to remain at peace with England under its new Stuart dynasty. As a part of the peace proposals, a Spanish princess is to marry James’ son, Henry, though this never happens. Spain had also gone bankrupt in 1598. Tyrone ignores all these realities, remains in Italy, and persists with his invasion plan until his death in exile in 1616.
The earls set sail from Rathmullan, a village on the shore of Lough Swilly in County Donegal, with some of the leading Gaelic families in Ulster. Several leave their wives behind, hoping either to return or retrieve them later. They travel down Lough Swilly on a French ship. Their departure is the end of the old Gaelic order, in that the earls are descended from Gaelic clan dynasties that had ruled their parts of Ulster for centuries. They finally reach the Continent on October 4, 1607.
Their destination is Spain, but they disembark in France. The party proceeds overland to Spanish Flanders, some remaining in Leuven, while the main party continues to Italy. Tadhg Ó Cianáin subsequently describes the journey in great detail. While the party is welcomed by many important officials in the Spanish Netherlands, he makes no mention of any negotiations or planning between the earls and the Spanish to start a new war to regain the earls’ properties.
James I soon plants the O’Neill and O’Donnell lands with Protestant settlers, helping to sow the seeds of the present “Troubles.” O’Donnell dies in Rome in 1608 and O’Neill dies there also in 1616.
Ó Cianáin’s diary is important as the only continuous and contemporaneous account of the Flight. Its original title, Turas na dTaoiseach nUltach as Éirinn – the departure of the Chiefs of Ulster from Ireland – has been changed since the creation of the more dramatic phrase “Flight of the Earls” to the latter’s modern literal translation, Imeacht na nIarlaí.
The Flight of the Earls is a watershed event in Irish history, as the ancient Gaelic aristocracy of Ulster goes into permanent exile. Despite their attachment to and importance in the Gaelic system, the Earls’ ancestors had accepted their Earldoms from the English-run Kingdom of Ireland in the 1540s, under the policy of surrender and regrant. Some historians argue that their flight is forced upon them by the fallout from the Tudor conquest of Ireland, while others that it is an enormous strategic mistake that clears the way for the Plantation of Ulster.
From 1616, a number of bards outside Ulster have a poetic debate in the “Contention of the bards” and one of the arguments celebrates King James’s Gaelic-Irish Milesian ancestry through Malcolm III of Scotland. So, it is debatable whether the Gaelic order has ended or is evolving.
(Pictured: A bronze sculpture commemorating the Flight in Rathmullan, County Donegal)
Peters is born on July 6, 1939, in Halewood, Lancashire, England, later living at 5 Mere Avenue in Alkrington, where she goes to primary school. She moves to Ballymena (and later Belfast) at the age of eleven when her father’s job is relocated to Northern Ireland. As a teenager, her father encourages her athletic career by building her home practice facilities as birthday gifts. She qualifies as a teacher and works while training.
After Ballymena, the family moves to Portadown where she attends Portadown College. The headmaster, Donald Woodman, and the PE teacher, Kenneth McClelland, introduce her to athletics, McClelland being her first coach. She is head girl of the school in 1956.
At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, competing for Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Peters wins the gold medal in the women’s pentathlon. She had finished 4th in 1964 and 9th in 1968. To win the gold medal, she narrowly beats the local favourite, West Germany’s Heide Rosendahl, by 10 points, setting a world record score. After her victory, death threats are phoned into the BBC: “Mary Peters is a Protestant and has won a medal for Britain. An attempt will be made on her life, and it will be blamed on the IRA … Her home will be going up in the near future.” But Peters insists she will return home to Belfast. She is greeted by fans and a band at the airport and paraded through the city streets but is not allowed back in her flat for three months. Turning down jobs in the United States and Australia, where her father lives, she insists on remaining in Northern Ireland.
In 1972, Peters wins the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award: “Peters, a 33-year-old secretary from Belfast, won Britain’s only athletics gold at the Munich Olympics. The pentathlon competition was decided on the final event, the 200m, and Peters claimed the title by one-tenth of a second.”
She represents Northern Ireland at every Commonwealth Games between 1958 and 1974. In these games she wins two gold medals for the pentathlon, plus a gold and silver medal for the shot put.
In May 2001, following her athletic career, Peters becomes a Trustee of The Outward Bound Trust and is Vice-President of the Northern Ireland Outward Bound Association. She is also Patron of Springhill Hospice in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.
Peters is appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to athletics in the 1973 New Year Honours. For services to sport, she is promoted in the same Order to Commander (CBE) in the 1990 Birthday Honours and again to Dame Commander (DBE) in the 2000 Birthday Honours. In the 2015 New Year Honours, she is awarded as Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH), also for services to sport and the community in Northern Ireland, and in 2017, she is made a Dame of the Order of Saint John (DStJ). She is appointed a Lady Companion of the Order of the Garter (LG) on February 27, 2019, and therefore granted the title Lady. She represents the Order at the 2023 coronation.
Northern Ireland’s premier athletics track, on the outskirts of Belfast, is named after Peters. A statue of her stands within it.
In April 2009, Peters is named the Lord Lieutenant of the City of Belfast; she retires from the post in 2014, being succeeded by Fionnuala Jay-O’Boyle. She is a Freeman of the Cities of Lisburn and Belfast.
When appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1789, FitzGibbon is granted his first peerage as Baron FitzGibbon, of Lower Connello in the County of Limerick, in the Peerage of Ireland that year. This does not entitle him to a seat in the British House of Lords, only in the Irish House of Lords. His later promotions come mostly in the Peerage of Ireland, being advanced to a Viscountcy in 1793 and the Earldom of Clare in 1795. He finally achieves a seat in the British House of Lords in 1799 when created Baron FitzGibbon, of Sidbury in the County of Devon, in the Peerage of Great Britain.
As Lord Chancellor for Ireland, FitzGibbon is a renowned champion of the Protestant Ascendancy and an opponent of Catholic emancipation. He despises the Parliament of Ireland‘s popular independent Constitution of 1782. He is also personally and politically opposed to the Irish politician Henry Grattan who urges a moderate course in the Irish Parliament and is responsible for defeating Grattan’s efforts to reform the Irish land tithe system under which Irish Catholic farmers (and all non-Anglican farmers) are forced to financially support the minority Anglican Church of Ireland. These are not fully repealed until 1869 when the Church of Ireland is finally disestablished, although Irish tithes are commuted after the Tithe War (1831–1836).
FitzGibbon opposes the Irish Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793 personally but apparently recommends its acceptance in the House of Lords, being forced out of necessity when that Act had been recommended to the Irish Executive by the British Cabinet led by William Pitt the Younger. Pitt expects Ireland to follow the British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 and allow Catholics to vote again and hold public offices. At the same time, FitzGibbon apparently denounces the policy this Act embodies, so it is probably safe to say that FitzGibbon’s own beliefs and principles conflict with his obligations as a member of the Irish executive of the time.
FitzGibbon’s role in the recall, soon after his arrival, of the popular pro-Emancipation Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl of Fitzwilliam, is debatable. Although he is probably politically opposed to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Fitzwilliam is apparently recalled, because of his own independent actions. Fitzwilliam is known to be friendly to the Ponsonby family and is generally a Foxite liberal Whig. His close association with and patronage of Irish Whigs led by Grattan and Ponsonby during his short tenure, along with his alleged support of an immediate effort to secure Catholic emancipation in a manner not authorized by the British cabinet is likely what leads to his recall. Thus, if anyone is to blame in the short-lived “Fitzwilliam episode” it is Henry Grattan and the Ponsonby brothers – presumably William Ponsonby, later Lord Imokilly, and his brother George Ponsonby — not to mention Lord Fitzwilliam himself. Irish Catholics at the time and later naturally see things very differently and blame hardline Protestants such as FitzGibbon.
Irish Catholics and FitzGibbon apparently agree on one point – Irish political and economic union with Great Britain, which eventually takes place in 1801. Pitt wants Union with Ireland concomitantly with Catholic emancipation, commutation of tithes, and the endowment of the Irish Catholic priesthood. Union is opposed by most hardline Irish Protestants, as well as liberals such as Grattan. FitzGibbon is a strong supporter of the Union since 1793 but refuses to have Catholic emancipation with the Union.
In the end, FitzGibbon’s views wins out, leading to the Union of Ireland with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland without any concessions for Ireland’s Catholic majority, or for that matter, Catholics in the rest of the new United Kingdom. He later claims that he has been duped by the way in which the Act is passed and is bitterly opposed to any concessions during the short remainder of his life.
FitzGibbon’s role as Lord Chancellor of Ireland during the period of the 1798 rebellion is questionable. According to some, he supports a hardline policy which uses torture, murder and massacre to crush the rebellion, or that as Lord Chancellor, he has considerable influence on military affairs, and that martial law cannot be imposed without his consent. Others allege that as Lord Chancellor, he has no say in military affairs. His former side is displayed by sparing the lives of the captured United Irish leaders in return for their confession of complicity and provision of information relating to the planning of the rebellion. However, this willingness of the prisoners to partake of the agreement is spurred by the execution of the Sheares brothers on July 14, 1798.
In contrast to the leniency shown to the largely upper-class leadership, the full weight of military repression is inflicted upon the common people throughout the years 1797–98 with untold thousands suffering imprisonment, torture, transportation and death. Fitzgibbon ss inclined to show no mercy to unrepentant rebels and in October 1798 he expressed his disgust upon the capture of Wolfe Tone that he had been granted a trial and his belief that Tone should have been hanged as soon as he set foot on land.
FitzGibbon is quick to recognise that sectarianism is a useful ally to divide the rebels and prevent the United Irishmen from achieving their goal of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, writing in June 1798, “In the North nothing will keep the rebels quiet but the conviction that where treason has broken out the rebellion is merely popish.”
FitzGibbon is noted by some as a good, improving landlord to both his Protestant and Catholic tenants. Some claim that the tenants of his Mountshannon estate call him “Black Jack” FitzGibbon. However, there is no evidence to support this claim, although there is little to no evidence on his dealings as a landlord. Irish nationalists and others point out that while he might have been interested in the welfare of his own tenants on his own estate, he treats other Irish Catholics very differently. Without further evidence, his role as a Protestant landowner in mainly Catholic Ireland is of little importance against his known dealings as Lord Chancellor.
FitzGibbon dies at his home, 6 Ely Place near St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, on January 28, 1802, and is buried in the churchyard at St. Peter’s Church, Aungier Street, Dublin. A hero to Protestant hardliners, but despised by the majority Catholic population, his funeral cortege is the cause of a riot and there is a widespread story that a number of dead cats are thrown at his coffin as it departs Ely Place.
(Pictured: “Portrait of John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare,” painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1789)
Brooke is born on June 9, 1888, at Colebrooke Park, his family’s neo-Classicalancestral seat on what is then the several-thousand-acre Colebrooke Estate, just outside Brookeborough, a village near Lisnaskea in County Fermanagh. He is the eldest son of Sir Arthur Douglas Brooke, 4th Baronet, whom he succeeds as 5th Baronet when his father dies in 1907. His mother is Gertrude Isabella Batson. He is a nephew of Field MarshalAlan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) during World War II, who is only five years his senior. His sister Sheelah marries Sir Henry Mulholland, Speaker of the Stormont House of Commons and son of Lord Dunleath. He is educated for five years at St. George’s School in Pau, France, and then at Winchester College (1901–05).
Brooke is a very active Ulster Unionist Party member and ally of Edward Carson. He founds his own paramilitary group, Brooke’s Fermanagh Vigilance, from men returning from the war front in 1918. Although the umbrella Ulster Volunteers had been quiescent during the war, it is not defunct. It re-emerges strongly in 1920, subsuming groups like Brooke’s.
In 1920, having reached the rank of captain, Brooke leaves the British Army to farm the Colebrooke Estate, the family estate in west Ulster, at which point he turns toward a career in politics.
Brooke has a very long political career. When he resigns the Premiership of Northern Ireland in March 1963, he is Northern Ireland’s longest-serving prime minister, having held office for two months short of 20 years. He also establishes a United Kingdom record by holding government office continuously for 33 years.
On May 2, 1943, Brooke succeeds John M. Andrews as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. In 1952, while Prime Minister, was raised to the peerage as Viscount Brookeborough, the title taken from the village named after the Brookes. Although a peer, he retained his seat in the House of Commons at Stormont and remained Prime Minister for another decade.
As the Northern Ireland economy begins to de-industrialise in the mid-1950s, leading to high unemployment amongst the Protestant working classes, Brooke faces increasing disenchantment amongst UUP backbenchers for what is regarded as his indifferent and ineffectual approach to mounting economic problems. As this disenchantment grows, British civil servants and some members of the UUP combine to exert discreet and ultimately effective pressure on Brooke to resign to make way for Captain Terence O’Neill, who is Minister of Finance.
Brooke is noted for his casual style toward his ministerial duties. Terence O’Neill later writes of him, “he was good company and a good raconteur, and those who met him imagined that he was relaxing away from his desk. However, they did not realise that there was no desk.”
In his retirement Brooke develops commercial interests as chairman of Carreras (Northern Ireland), a director of Devenish Trade, and president of the Northern Ireland Institute of Directors. He is also made an honorary LL.D. of Queen’s University Belfast.
From 1970 to 1973, years in which the Stormont institution comes under its greatest strain and eventually crumbles, Brooke makes only occasional forays into political life. In 1972, he appears next to William Craig MP on the balcony of Parliament Buildings at Stormont, a diminutive figure beside the leader of the Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party (VUPP) who is rallying right-wing Unionists against the Government of Northern Ireland. He opposes the Westminsterwhite paper on the future of Northern Ireland and causes some embarrassment to his son, Captain John Brooke, the UUP Chief Whip and an ally of Brian Faulkner, by speaking against the Faulkner ministry‘s proposals.
Brooke dies at his home, Colebrooke Park, on the Colebrooke Estate, on August 18, 1973. His remains are cremated at Roselawn Cemetery, East Belfast, three days later, and, in accordance with his wishes, his ashes are scattered on the demesne surrounding his beloved Colebrooke Park.
William Corbet, an Anglo-Irish soldier in the service of France, is born in Ballythomas, County Cork, on August 17, 1779. In September 1798, he accompanies James Napper Tandy in an aborted French mission to Ireland in support of the United Irish insurrection. After two years of incarceration, he escapes from Ireland and serves in the campaigns of Napoleon reaching the rank of colonel. In 1831, under the July Monarchy, he is employed in the Morea expedition to Greece. He returns to France in 1837, retiring with the rank of Major-General.
Corbet is born into a branch of the Corbet family, an Anglo-Irish Protestant family. In 1798, as a member of the Society of United Irishmen, he is expelled from Trinity College Dublin with Robert Emmet and others for treasonable activities and goes instead to Paris. In September of the same year, he joins a French military force under James Napper Tandy with the rank of Captain and sails from Dunkirk with arms and ammunition for Ireland. The expedition has to turn back following the defeat of General Jean Joseph Amable Humbert and arriving in Hamburg they are handed over to the British authorities and taken to Ireland, where they are imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol.
Corbet escapes in 1803 and returns to France. He is appointed professor of English at the military college of Saint-Cyr. Later that year he becomes a captain in the Irish Legion. Following the death of his brother Thomas (who was also in the Legion) in a duel with another officer, he is transferred to the 70th Regiment of the line, where he serves in André Masséna‘s expedition to Portugal, and distinguishes himself in the retreat from Torres Vedras and the Battle of Sabugal. After the Battle of Salamanca, he is appointed chef de bataillon of the 47th regiment and serves until 1813 when he is summoned to Germany to join the staff of MarshalAuguste de Marmont. He serves at the battles of Lützen, Bautzen, Dresden and others and is made a commander of the Legion of Honour. In December 1814, he is naturalised as a French citizen. In 1815, after the abdication of Napoleon, he is promoted to colonel and chief of staff to General Louis-Marie-Celeste d’Aumont at Caen.
In 1837, Corbet returns to France where, with the rank of Major-General, he is commander in the region of Calvados. He dies at Saint-Denis on August 12, 1842.
The Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth bases the main theme of her novel Ormond on Corbet’s 1803 escape from Kilmainham Gaol.
seamus dubhghaill 