John Dudley Digges, Irish stage actor, director, and producer as well as a film actor, is born in Ranelagh, Dublin, on June 9, 1879. Although he gains his initial theatre training and acting experience in Ireland, the vast majority of his career is spent in the United States, where over the span of 43 years he works in hundreds of stage productions and performs in over 50 films.
Digges is the child of James Digges and Catherine Forsythe. He becomes acquainted with theatre directors William and Frank Fay and takes an interest in acting. He joins W. G. Fay’s Irish National Dramatic Company, along with others including Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh, James H. Cousins, Frederick Ryan and Maire Quinn (who becomes his wife). Their first production, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, with Maud Gonne in the lead role, and Déirdre, is on April 2, 1902. The company, which has no funds to speak of, acquires a couple of bare rooms at 34 Lower Camden Street, which with the help of friends from Irish-revival societies they turn into a small theatre. However, this proves too small for the plays they are planning to stage. They rehearse at the Coffee Palace in Westmoreland Street and also use the Molesworth Hall for productions.
In 1903, the playwrights and most of the actors and staff from these productions go on to form the Irish National Theatre Society, which has its registered offices in Camden Street. The society founds the Abbey Theatre.
Digges goes to the United States with a group of fellow-actors in 1904, and becomes successful as both actor and producer. He is stage manager for a time to both Charles Frohman and George Arliss, and by the 1920s he has become a notable performer on Broadway. One of his best-known roles there is as Ficsur in the original 1921 production of Ferenc Molnár‘s Liliom (later adapted into the musical Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein). In 1924, in Woodstock, New York, he founds the Maverick Theater with the assistance of Hervey White, who had established the Maverick Arts Colony. He is also artistic director of a company that includes Helen Hayes and Edward G. Robinson.
Digges expands his career into films by 1929, and over nearly two decades he performs in more than 50 films, including the original pre-Hays Code adaptation of The Maltese Falcon (1931). He Is cast in that feature as Casper Gutman, the character later portrayed by Sydney Greenstreet in the 1941 version. In The Invisible Man (1933) he plays the Chief Detective who plots to capture the title character, opposite the unseen Claude Rains. He plays the role of the Heavenly Examiner in both the original Broadway production and the 1930 screen version of Sutton Vane‘s Outward Bound. He also works as a director on Broadway.
Digges marries only once, to Irish actress Maire Quinn. The couple wed on August 27, 1907, in New York City and remain together until Maire’s death in August 1947. On October 24, 1947, just two months after his wife’s death, he dies of a stroke in his Manhattan apartment at 1 West 64th Street. He is survived by three siblings, all living in Ireland: a sister, Mrs. Mai Gannen, and two brothers, James and Ernst. Following a requiem mass at Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church on October 28, he is buried next to his wife at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.
(Pictured: Digges as Boss Mangan in the 1920 Broadway production Heartbreak House, which he also directs)
Gannon is born on August 1, 1910, in Harold’s Cross, Dublin, into a craftsmen family of carpenters, many of whom worked in the famous Guinness Brewery. His education, in two local schools, is rudimentary and at the age of fifteen he starts working as an apprentice carpenter in the Guinness Brewery. His apprenticeship involves learning to make office furniture and attending evening classes in nearby colleges, where he is able to improve his education in a more congenial atmosphere. A love of music and the arts had been encouraged by two maiden aunts. His parents subsequently purchase an upright piano and he learns to play it at the Read Pianoforte School. When his apprenticeship is completed and he is on the dole for some years, he spends much of his spare time buying pictures, books, antiques and old clocks and watches in the various auction rooms and antique shops in Dublin.
While reading a series of articles about Tibet in a magazine, Gannon stumbles across an article, which, he believes, is by Violet Gordon-Woodhouse, a British harpsichordist and clavichord player of the period. The article is about the revival of the harpsichord, which interests him. He asks permission to examine the harpsichords on display in the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, but is given no encouragement by the staff. He is finally allowed to see the instruments when he is in his early twenties. Dismayed, he concludes that they are too expensive to buy and too complicated to make.
In London with Margaret, who is visiting her parents, Gannon goes to the Benton Fletcher collection of keyboard instruments, which is then in Chelsea, and measures a harpsichord by Jacob and Abraham Kirckman. Back home, he makes a copy of the instrument in a tiny conservatory at the back of his house in the Dublin suburb of Rialto. The harpsichord is played by John S. Beckett for the first time in public in 1959 as the continuo for Johann Sebastian Bach‘s St. Matthew Passion and is praised in the national press. Beckett subsequently persuades the authorities in the Guinness Brewery to provide Gannon with a special workshop, in which he makes five harpsichords and restores several antique pianos. The first harpsichord made in the Brewery is donated to the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin. The second is sold to Harrods of London, and the third is sold to Ireland’s national radio and television station RTÉ. This third instrument is used regularly by the RTÉ Symphony and Concert orchestras and also by the well-known composer and performer of Irish traditional music, Seán Ó Riada.
Gannon continues to make many more harpsichords and restore more pianos during the years to come. In all, he completes twenty harpsichords during his lifetime – the final four are completed by a friend, Patrick Horsley, in England. One of the harpsichords made by Gannon-Horsley returns to Ireland and is presented to NUI Maynooth. A piano of note that he restores is a Broadwood square piano owned by the poet and composer, Thomas Moore, which belonged to Lord and Lady Elveden (later Iveagh).
Gannon is the subject of several RTÉ radio programmes, three RTÉ television programmes (including The Late Late Show) and a television programme, Gallery, made by BBC Northern Ireland. He befriends a great many people, including the artist, writer and conservationist Peter Pearson, and regular musical evenings are held at the family home in Bryan Guinness‘s grounds in the suburbs of Dublin. Because of his interest in antique clocks and watches, he becomes a member of the Irish branch of the Antiquarian Horological Society, founded by his friend William Stuart.
In 1978, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) gives Gannon an honorary MA degree for his contribution to the authentic performance of early music in Ireland. Two years later, he is invited to travel with the New Irish Chamber Orchestra to China, where he tunes and maintains one of his harpsichords and celebrates his seventieth birthday. In 1989, a second honorary MA is given to him, this time by NUI Maynooth.
Following Gannon’s 80th birthday, which is attended by fifty people, he finally settles down to retirement. A series of minor strokes follow, which eventually lead to dementia and ultimately to his death, aged 88, on May 23, 1999.
The Cathal Gannon Early Music Room is opened in the Royal Irish Academy of Music in May 2003. It contains a harpsichord and clavichord made by Gannon, a Broadwood grand piano restored by him, and a square piano.
Part of a transmitted RTÉ programme, Nationwide (January 17, 2007), features archive footage of Gannon and his instruments. Three RTÉ radio programmes, Bowman: Sunday Morning, broadcast in November 2006, feature a 1983 interview with Gannon.
Dillon leaves school at the age of fourteen and for seven years works as a painter and decorator, mostly in London. From an early age he is interested in art, cinema, and theatre. About 1936 he starts out as an artist.
Dillon’s Connemara landscapes provide the viewer with context, portraits of the characters who work the land, atmosphere and idiosyncratic colour interpretations. At the age of 18, he goes to London, initially working as a decorator. With the outbreak of World War II, he returns to Belfast. Over the next five years he develops as a painter in Dublin and Belfast. His works during this period are more than simple depictions of the life and people around him, they are reactions and interactions in paint.
In 1942, Dillon’s first solo exhibition is opened by his friend and fellow artist, Mainie Jellett, at The Country Shop, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin. “Father, Forgive Them Their Sins” depicts his concerns about the new war that has broken out. Despite a growing reputation, he returns to London in 1944 to work on demolition gangs to restore his finances. In the late 1940s and during the 1950s, he finds himself favouring the town of Roundstone, County Galway. In 1951 he is introduced to Noreen Rice by her piano teacher. She has no formal training and takes Dillon and George Campbell as her mentors for decades and her work is of a similar surrealistic and primitive style.
In 1958, Dillon has the double honour of representing Ireland at the Guggenheim International, and Great Britain at the Pittsburg International Exhibition. He and his sister, Mollie, have a property on Abbey Road in 1958. They let out part of the house to Arthur Armstrong and they let a flat to Noreen Rice and her brother. He and Noreen tour junk yards to find objects like leather and string that they include in their artwork.
Dillon travels widely in Europe and teaches for brief periods in the London art schools.
In 1967, Dillon suffers a stroke and spends six weeks in hospital. From this time his work changes direction. A notion of imminent death sends his work almost into another world, a realm of dreams and paintings intimating his death. In 1968 he is back in Dublin, where he helps to design sets and costumes for Seán O’Casey‘s play Juno and the Paycock. He continues to paint and also to make tapestries, sitting at his Singersewing machine.
In 1969, Dillon pulls his artworks from the Belfast leg of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in purported protest during the Troubles against the “arrogance of the Unionist mob.” However, he does send work to Ulster when he donates work to Sheelagh Flanagan who had organised an exhibition for the relief of victims of the Belfast riots, in October 1969. His picture is hanged alongside the donated works of T. P. Flanagan, William Scott, F. E. McWilliam, Deborah Brown and Carolyn Mulholland as well as more than twenty others. Michael Longley retorts in a further letter, “Belfast needed creativity, it needed people like Gerard Dillon.” During his last years, he is invited to be involved in a children’s art workshop in the National Gallery of Ireland.
Dillon dies of a second stroke at the age of 55 on June 14, 1971. His grave, as requested, is unmarked in Belfast’s Milltown Cemetery. Danlann Gerard Dillon/The Gerard Dillon Gallery in Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich is named in his honour.
In his biography of the artist, James White briefly touches on the artists homosexuality: “such was his religious feeling that although he was drawn to people of that type, if he once had an encounter I believe that it never occurred again.” The artist’s nephew, Martin Dillon, recalls that after his uncle’s death he found a diary entry describing a homosexual encounter with a sense of guilt, but the author Gerard Keenan insists he was “a very well-adjusted homosexual.” Reihill expands on this, pointing to a probably unrequited love for the painter Daniel O’Neill and also highlights Dillon’s association with Basil Rákóczi and The White Stag Group‘s Kenneth Hall both strong gay connections. Pictures with both overt and covert references are known.
In addition to Beckett’s activity as a music critic for The Irish Times, he also writes biographical articles for dictionaries, in particular for the first edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. His books include studies on Franz Liszt and ballet music.
Beckett’s more ambitious musical works from the 1940s and 1950s are a Suite for Orchestra (1945), Four Higgins Songs (1946), The Falaingin Dances (1958) and a Suite of Planxties (1960) for harp and orchestra.
In 1963 Beckett moves to England, where he teaches music at various schools before returning to Ireland in 1970 to succeed A. J. Potter at the RIAM as professor of harmony and counterpoint. In the 1980s he produces a number of remarkable works such as Quartet for Strings (1980) and Dublin Symphony (1989) for narrator, chamber choir and large orchestra. While he is never a modernist, his later works nevertheless contain some advanced harmony, particularly in the quartet.
Beckett is forced to retire from the RIAM in 1985 after suffering a stroke. In 1986 he is elected a member of Aosdána and an Honorary Fellow of the RIAM in 1990. He dies in Dublin on April 3, 1996. He is buried in Rathnew Cemetery, County Wicklow.
Stanford is born in Dublin into a well-off and highly musical family on September 30, 1852, the only son of John James Stanford, a prominent Dublin lawyer, Examiner to the Court of Chancery in Ireland and Clerk of the Crown for County Meath, and his second wife, Mary (née Henn). He is educated at the University of Cambridge before studying music in Leipzig and Berlin. He is instrumental in raising the status of the Cambridge University Musical Society, attracting international stars to perform with it.
While still an undergraduate, Stanford is appointed organist of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1882, at the age of 29, he is one of the founding professors at the Royal College of Music, where he teaches composition for the rest of his life. From 1887 he is also Professor of Music at Cambridge. As a teacher, he is skeptical about modernism and bases his instruction chiefly on classical principles as exemplified in the music of Johannes Brahms. Among his pupils are rising composers whose fame go on to surpass his own, such as Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. As a conductor, he holds posts with the Bach Choir and the Leeds Triennial Music Festival.
Stanford composes a substantial number of concert works, including seven symphonies, but his best-remembered pieces are his choral works for church performance, chiefly composed in the Anglican tradition. He is a dedicated composer of opera, but none of his nine completed operas has endured in the general repertory. Some critics regard him, together with Hubert Parry and Alexander Mackenzie, as responsible for a renaissance in music from the British Isles. However, after his conspicuous success as a composer in the last two decades of the 19th century, his music is eclipsed in the 20th century by that of Edward Elgar as well as former pupils.
In September 1922, Stanford completes the sixth Irish Rhapsody, his final work. Two weeks later he celebrates his 70th birthday and thereafter his health declines. On March 17, 1924, he suffers a stroke and dies on March 29 at his home in London, survived by his wife and children. He is cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on April 2 and his ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey the following day.
Stanford’s last opera, The Travelling Companion, composed during World War I, is premiered by amateur performers at the David Lewis Theatre, Liverpool in 1925 with a reduced orchestra. The work is given complete at Bristol in 1928 and at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London, in 1935.
Cruise O’Brien follows his cousin Owen into Sandford Park School, which has a predominantly Protestant ethos despite objections from Catholic clergy. He subsequently attends Trinity College Dublin (TCD) before joining the Irish diplomatic corps.
Although he is a fierce advocate of his homeland, Cruise O’Brien is a strong critic of Irish Republican Army (IRA) violence and of what he considers the romanticized desire for reunification with Northern Ireland. His collection of essays Maria Cross: Imaginative Patterns in a Group of Modern Catholic Writers (1952; written under the pseudonym Donat O’Donnell) impresses UN Secretary-GeneralDag Hammarskjöld, who in 1961 appoints him UN special representative in the Congo, later the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He orders UN peacekeeping forces into the breakaway Katanga province, and the resulting scandal forces him out of office. Despite UN objections, he writes To Katanga and Back (1963) to explain his actions.
After serving as vice-chancellor of the University of Ghana (1962–65) and Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at New York University (1965–69), Cruise O’Brien enters Irish politics. He holds a Labour Party seat in Dáil Éireann from 1969 to 1977 and then in the Senate from 1977 to 1979, representing Trinity College, of which he is pro-chancellor (1973–2008).
In 1979, Cruise O’Brien is named editor in chief of the British Sunday newspaper The Observer, but he leaves after three tumultuous years. He remains an active newspaper columnist, especially for the Irish Independent until 2007. His books include States of Ireland (1972) and On the Eve of the Millennium (1995), as well as perceptive studies of Charles Stewart Parnell, Edmund Burke, and Thomas Jefferson.
In early July 1996, in the period of Cruise O’Brien’s involvement as a UK Unionist Party (UKUP) representative in talks at Stormont, he suffers a mild stroke. He recovers well, but is left with anxiety about his recall of names. His last public appearance is on September 7, 2006, to deliver an address on the ninetieth anniversary of the death of Tom Kettle, in the old House of Lords chamber of the Bank of Ireland on College Green.
Corrigan is the son of a dealer in agricultural tools. He is educated in St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, which then has a department for secular students apart from the ecclesiastical seminary. He is attracted to the study of medicine by the physician in attendance, and spends several years as an apprentice to the local doctor, Edward Talbot O’Kelly. He studies medicine in Dublin later transferring to Edinburgh Medical School where he receives his degree as MD in August 1825.
Corrigan returns to Dublin in 1825 and sets up a private practice at 11 Ormond Street. As his practice grows, he moves to 12 Bachelors Walk in 1832, and in 1837 to 4 Merrion Square West. Apart from his private practice, he holds many public appointments. He is a physician to St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, the Sick Poor Institute, the Charitable Infirmary Jervis Street (1830–43) and the House of Industry Hospitals (1840–66). His work with many of Dublin’s poorest inhabitants leads to him specialising in diseases of the heart and lungs, and he lectures and published extensively on the subject. He is known as a very hard-working physician, especially during the Great Famine of Ireland. At the 1870 Dublin City by-election he is elected a LiberalMember of Parliament for Dublin City. In parliament he actively campaigns for reforms to education in Ireland and the early release of Fenian prisoners. He does not stand for re-election in 1874. His support for temperance and Sunday closing (of pubs) antagonises his constituents and alcohol companies
In 1847, Corrigan is appointed physician-in-ordinary to the Queen in Ireland. Two years later he is given an honorary MD from Trinity College Dublin (TCD). In 1846, his application to become a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) is blocked. In 1855, he gets around this opposition by sitting the college’s entrance exam with the newly qualified doctors. He becomes a fellow in 1856, and in 1859 is elected president, the first Catholic to hold the position. He is re-elected president an unprecedented four times. There is a statue of Corrigan in the Graves’ Hall of the college by John Henry Foley.
Corrigan is President of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland, the Dublin Pathological Society, and the Dublin Pharmaceutical Society. From the 1840s he is a member of the senate of the Queen’s University and in 1871 becomes its vice-chancellor. In 1866, he is created a baronet, of Cappagh and Inniscorrig in County Dublin and of Merrion Square in the City of Dublin, partly as a reward for his services as Commissioner of Education for many years. He is a member of the board of Glasnevin Cemetery and a member of the Daniel O’Connell Memorial Committee. Armand Trousseau, the French clinician, proposes that aortic heart disease should be called Corrigan’s disease.
The Corrigan Ward, a cardiology ward in Beaumont Hospital, Dublin is named in his honour. Part of his family crest is also part of the Beaumont Hospital crest.
Corrigan marries Joanna Woodlock, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and sister of the Bishop Dr. Bartholomew Woodlock, in 1827. They have six children, three girls and three boys. Hus eldest son, Captain John Joseph Corrigan, Dragoon Guards, dies on January 6, 1866, aged 35 years and is interred at the Melbourne General Cemetery, Melbourne, Australia.
Corrigan dies at Merrion Square, Dublin, on February 1, 1880, having suffered a stroke the previous December. He is buried in the crypt of St. Andrews Church on Westland Row, Dublin. His grandson succeeds him to the baronetcy.
Mackey is born in Castleconnell, County Limerick, on July 12, 1912. Educated at Castleconnell National School, he receives no secondary schooling and subsequently joins the Electricity Supply Board where he spends forty-seven years as a van driver with the company at Ardnacrusha, County Clare. He also spends five years as a member of the Irish Army.
Mackey first arrives on the inter-county scene at the age of seventeen when he first links up with the Limerick minor team, before later lining out with the junior side. He makes his senior debut in the 1930–31 National Hurling League. He goes on to play a key part for Limerick during a golden age for the team, and wins three All-Ireland medals, five Munster medals and five National Hurling League medals. An All-Ireland runner-up on two occasions, he also captains the team to two All-Ireland victories.
Mackey’s brother, John, also shares in these victories while his father, John “Tyler” Mackey, is a one-time All-Ireland runner-up with Limerick.
Mackey represents the Munster GAA inter-provincial team for twelve years, winning eight Railway Cup medals during the period. At club level, he wins fifteen championship medals with Ahane.
Throughout his inter-county career, Mackey makes 42 championship appearances for Limerick. His retirement comes following the conclusion of the 1947 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship.
In retirement from playing, Mackey becomes involved in team management and coaching. As trainer of the Limerick senior team, he guides them to the 1955 Railway Cup Hurling Championship. He also serves as a selector on various occasions with both Limerick and Munster. He also serves as a referee.
Mackey is widely regarded as one of the greatest hurlers in the history of the game. He is the inaugural recipient of the All-Time All Star Award. He is repeatedly voted onto teams made up of the sport’s greats, including at centre-forward on the Hurling Team of the Century in 1984 and the Hurling Team of the Millennium in 2000. In 2021, the trophy given to the winning Munster Senior Hurling Championship team is named in Mackey’s honour.
Mackey is married to Kathleen “Kitty” Kennedy (1914–2003) and the couple has five children: Paddy, Michael, Greg, Audrey and Ruth.
In declining health for some years, Mackey suffers a series of strokes toward the end of his life. He dies in Dooradoyle, County Limerick, on September 13, 1982. All his medals and trophies are on display in the GAA Museum in Croke Park. A stand in the Limerick Gaelic Grounds is named after him.
There are few surviving records of Sarsfield’s early life, although it is generally agreed he is brought up on the family estates at Tully. While some biographies claim he is educated at a French military college, there is no evidence for this.
Sarsfield fights at Entzheim, Turckheim and Altenheim. He and Hamilton are standing next to Turenne when he is killed by a chance shot at Salzbach in July 1675. He remains in France until the war ends in 1678, then returns to London to join a new regiment being recruited by Thomas Dongan, 2nd Earl of Limerick. However, the Popish Plot then results in Sarsfield and other Catholics being barred from serving in the military.
This leaves Sarsfield short of money, and he becomes involved in an expensive legal campaign to regain Lucan Manor from the heirs of his brother William, who dies in 1675. This ultimately proves unsuccessful amid allegations of forged documents, and in 1681 he returns to London, where he makes two separate attempts to abduct an heiress and is lucky to escape prosecution. When Charles’s Catholic brother James becomes king in 1685, Sarsfield rejoins the army and fights in the decisive Battle of Sedgemoor, which ends the Monmouth Rebellion. James is keen to promote Catholics, whom he views as more loyal, and by 1688 Sarsfield is colonel of a cavalry unit.
After Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, is appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1687, he begins creating a Catholic-dominated Irish army and political establishment. Aware of preparations for invasion by his nephew and son-in-law William of Orange, James sends Sarsfield to Dublin in September to persuade Tyrconnell to provide him with Irish troops. This proves unsuccessful, and in November James is deposed by the Glorious Revolution. Sarsfield takes part in the Wincanton Skirmish, one of the few military actions during the invasion. He remains in England until January when he is allowed to join James in France.
Accompanied by French troops and English exiles, James lands in Ireland in March 1689, beginning the Williamite War in Ireland. Sarsfield is promoted brigadier, elected to the 1689 Irish Parliament for County Dublin, and commands cavalry units in the campaign in Ulster and Connacht. When an Irish brigade is sent to France in October, French ambassador Jean-Antoine de Mesmes proposes Sarsfield as its commander. He notes that while “not…of noble birth […], (he) has distinguished himself by his ability, and (his) reputation in this kingdom is greater than that of any man I know […] He is brave, but above all has a sense of honour and integrity in all that he does”.
James rejects this, stating that although unquestionably brave, Sarsfield is “very scantily supplied with brains.” His role at the Battle of the Boyne is peripheral, although the battle is less decisive than often assumed, Jacobite losses being around 2,000 from a force of 25,000. James returns to France, leaving Tyrconnell in control. He is the leader of the “Peace Party,” who want to negotiate a settlement preserving Catholic rights to land and public office. Sarsfield heads the “War Party,” who feel they can gain more by fighting on. It includes the Luttrell brothers, Nicholas Purcell and English Catholic William Dorrington, a former colleague from Monmouth’s Regiment.
The position of the War Party is strengthened by the Declaration of Finglas, which offers the rank and file amnesty but excludes senior officers. French victories in the Low Countries briefly increases hopes of a Stuart restoration, and the Jacobites establish a defensive line along the River Shannon. Sarsfield cements his reputation with an attack on the Williamite artillery train at Ballyneety, widely credited with forcing them to abandon the first siege of Limerick. The Jacobites also retain Athlone, offset by the loss of Kinsale and Cork, which make resupply from France extremely difficult.
With Tyrconnell absent in France, Sarsfield takes control and in December 1690, arrests several leaders of the peace faction. He then bypasses James by asking Louis XIV directly for French support, and requesting the removal of Tyrconnell and the army commander James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick, James’ illegitimate son. The latter, who later describes Sarsfield as “a man […] without sense”, albeit “very good-natured,” leaves Limerick for France in February.
Tyrconnell returns in January 1691, carrying letters from James making Sarsfield Earl of Lucan, an attempt to placate an “increasingly influential and troublesome figure.” A large French convoy arrives at Limerick in May, along with Charles Chalmot de Saint-Ruhe, appointed military commander in an attempt to end the conflict between the factions. Saint-Ruhr and 7,000 others die at Aughrim in July 1691, reputedly the bloodiest battle ever on Irish soil. Sarsfield’s role is unclear: one account claims he quarrels with Saint-Ruhe and is sent to the rear with the cavalry reserves.
The remnants of the Jacobite army regroup at Limerick. Tyrconnell dies of a stroke in August, and in October, Sarsfield negotiates terms of surrender. He is criticised for this, having constantly attacked Tyrconnell for advocating the same thing, while it is suggested the Williamite army is weaker than he judged. However, the collapse of the Shannon line and surrender of Galway and Sligo leaves him little option. Without French supplies, the military position is hopeless, and defections mean his army is dissolving.
The military articles of the Treaty of Limerick preserve the Jacobite army by allowing its remaining troops to enter French service. About 19,000 officers and men, including Sarsfield, choose to leave in what is known as the Flight of the Wild Geese. Sarsfield’s handling of the civil articles is less successful. Most of its protections are ignored by the new regime, although Sarsfield possibly views it as temporary, hoping to resume the war.
On arrival in France, Sarsfield becomes Major-General in the army of exiles, an appointment James makes with great reluctance. In addition to other acts of perceived insubordination, Sarsfield allegedly tells William’s negotiators at Limerick “change but kings with us, and we will fight it over again.” After the planned invasion of England is abandoned in 1692, the exiles become part of the French army, and Sarsfield a French maréchal de camp.
Sarsfield fights at Steenkerque in August 1692, and is fatally wounded at the Battle of Landen in 1693, dying at Huy on August 21, 1693. Despite several searches, no grave or burial record has been found, although a plaque at St. Martin’s Church, Huy, has been set up in commemoration and an announcement in 2023 states that, pending exhumation and identification, his remains have been located. Like much else, his reputed last words, “Oh that this had been shed for Ireland!” are apocryphal.
Hyde is born at Longford House in Castlerea, County Roscommon, on January 17, 1860. In 1867, his father is appointed prebendary and rector of Tibohine, and the family moves to neighbouring Frenchpark, in County Roscommon. He is home schooled by his father and his aunt due to a childhood illness. While a young man, he becomes fascinated with hearing the old people in the locality speak the Irish language.
Rejecting family pressure to follow previous generations with a career in the Church, Hyde instead becomes an academic. He enters Trinity College, Dublin (TCD), where he gains a great facility for languages, learning Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and German, but his great passion in life is the preservation of the Irish language.
After spending a year teaching modern languages in Canada, Hyde returns to Ireland. For much of the rest of his life he writes and collects hundreds of stories, poems, and folktales in Irish, and translates others. His work in Irish helps to inspire many other literary writers, such as W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory.
In 1892, Hyde helps establish the Gaelic Journal and in November of that year writes a manifesto called The necessity for de-anglicising the Irish nation, arguing that Ireland should follow her own traditions in language, literature, and even in dress.
In 1893, Hyde founds the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) along with Eoin MacNeill and Fr. Eugene O’Growney and serves as its first president. Many of the new generation of Irish leaders who play a central role in the fight for Irish independence in the early twentieth century, including Patrick Pearse, Éamon de Valera, Michael Collins, and Ernest Blythe first become politicised and passionate about Irish independence through their involvement in the Gaelic League. Hyde does not want the Gaelic League to be a political entity, so when the surge of Irish nationalism that the Gaelic League helps to foster begins to take control of many in the League and politicize it in 1915, Hyde resigns as president.
In 1938, Hyde is unanimously elected to the newly created position of President of Ireland, a post he holds until 1945. Hyde is inaugurated on June 26, 1938, in the first inaugural ceremony in the nation’s history. Despite being placed in a position to shape the office of the presidency via precedent, Hyde by and large opts for a quiet, conservative interpretation of the office. In April 1940, he suffers a massive stroke and plans are made for his lying in state and state funeral, but to the surprise of everyone he survives, albeit paralysed and confined to a wheelchair. One of his last presidential acts is a visit to the German ambassador Eduard Hempel on May 3, 1945, to offer his condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler, a visit which remains a secret until 2005.
Hyde leaves office on June 25, 1945, opting not to nominate himself for a second term. He opts not return to his Roscommon home due to his ill-health, but rather moves into the former Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant’s residence in the grounds of Áras an Uachtaráin, where he lived out the remaining four years of his life.
Hyde dies in Dublin on July 12, 1949, at age 89. As a former President of Ireland he is accorded a state funeral which, as a member of the Church of Ireland, takes place in Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Since contemporary rules of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland at the time prohibit Roman Catholics from attending services in non-Catholic churches, all but one member of the Catholic cabinet remain outside the cathedral grounds while Hyde’s funeral takes place. Hyde is buried in Frenchpark, County Roscommon at Portahard Church.
seamus dubhghaill 