Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Publication
    The ascent to establishment status: the Irish Catholic hierarchy of the mid-seventeenth century
    (Manchester University Press, 2013-01)
    Many factors distinguished Irish from British Catholicism in the course of the seventeenth century. Most importantly, Ireland was unique within the archipelago in the fact that Catholicism was the religion of the great majority of the island's inhabitants. The sheer size of the Catholic population also created both opportunities and administrative difficulties for the church of Rome in Ireland and in the course of the seventeenth century the island acquired a Catholic organisational apparatus which rendered it unique, not merely within the archipelago, but in the entire area defined in Rome as in partibus infidelium, that is those areas of the world not within the jurisdiction of a Catholic state. In Jacobean and Caroline Ireland a shadow church-in-waiting was created, which for a brief period during the 1640s effectively replaced the state church in much of the island. It is the purpose of this chapter to trace the evolution and chief characteristics of this alternative ecclesiastical establishment, concentrating in particular on what emerged as the hierarchical apex of Catholic clerical organisation, the episcopate.
      323
  • Publication
    Disappointing Friends: France and the Confederate Catholics of Ireland, 1642-48
    (Laboratoire d'Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA), 2014)
    This article examines the interactions between the Confederate Catholics of Ireland and France during the 1640s. Despite the mutual goodwill between the governments, ultimately this relationship proved disappointing to both parties. The Confederate Catholics did not receive the level of support from France which they had hoped for from the beginning of the rebellion in Ireland. On the other hand, France’s policies in Ireland largely failed. Mazarin’s government failed to make use of Irish resources to fashion a successful anti-parliamentarian coalition in Ireland as a launching-pad for the resuscitation of the royalist position throughout the archipelago. French recruitment policies in Ireland also proved unsuccessful as the French received fewer recruits during the Confederate period than either immediately before or immediately after the association’s existence. From their perspective, a certain limited advantage was gained by the fact that Spain also was unable to profit from Irish recruiting grounds during the 1640s, but the failure of the attempts to re-establish the Stuart monarchy ultimately undermined even this small achievement, when Spain gained disproportionately from the mass exodus of Irish soldiers following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in the early 1650s.
      384
  • Publication
    Giovanni Battista Rinuccini and the Confederate Catholics of Ireland
    (Iwanami Shoten, 2012-11)
    GianBattista Rinuccini was one of the most significant actors in Ireland during the pivotal decade of the 1640s. Although ultimately he proved unsuccessful in almost everything which he attempted to achieve politically in Ireland during that period, he exerted a profound influence over the affairs of the Confederate Catholics of Ireland, the oath-bound association which had established a quasi-state in much of the island in the wake of the 1641 rebellion. In particular, by his staunch resistance to Confederate attempts to negotiate a durable peace settlement with the Royalist party under the leadership of the Marquis of Ormond, he altered the whole course of events not merely in Ireland but in the archipelago as a whole, as his efforts ensured that Ireland did not become a Royalist stronghold until  after the execution of the king in 1649, rather than at least three years earlier.
      201