Böcker i Maynooth Studies in Local Hist-serien

In the sixteenth century the Duhallow region of north-west Co. Cork was one of the most indisputably Irish parts of Ireland. Characterized geographically by the mountainous boggy lands of Sliabh Luachra, the region was dominated by the lordships of the MacDonogh-MacCarthys, the MacAuliffes, the O'Callaghans, and the O'Keeffes. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, these lordships had largely been dismantled and the region was increasingly dominated by New English settler families such as the Boyles, Percivals, and Aldworths residing around new towns at Newmarket and Kanturk. This study charts the transformation of early modern Duhallow by examining the crisis of Irish lordship in the region under the Tudors and the decline and fall of the lordships during the early Stuart period. In doing so, it examines a microcosm of how Irish lordship was often destroyed not by direct conquest and colonisation, but by a gradual process of economic, social, and political erosion.

Nathaniel Colgan MRIA, a self-taught botanist, was known for his research on the 'real' shamrock and for his encyclopaedic survey, The flora of the county Dublin. Little was known of his early life and family or of his interests beyond botany, marine biology, mountaineering, and his day-job. He was remembered for being shy, but perhaps it was more a case of being reserved on account of his personal background. When he was 14, he and his siblings were orphaned and brought up in the Coombe, Dublin. Held in high esteem by his peers, he rose to become a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. This study uncovers his hidden past, from the grandfather whose silk-weaving business waned to his espousal of Gaelic culture: a founder of the Feis Cheoil movement and a member of the Gaelic League, he was the subject of a secret police report when he supported the promotion of a member of the Volunteers as his successor as head clerk in the Dublin police court.

This study is focused on Thomas Conolly of Castletown House, Co. Kildare, and the social networking of the power elite. Structured as a biography of Conolly, it acts as a prism through which to view the power of the ascendancy class in the second half of the nineteenth century. In this period the cultural hegemony of Ireland was dominated by the ascendancy class, which remained reasonably intact but was beginning to break down. At the heart of this class was Conolly, who moved from space to space engaging in the social rituals that connected the elites within the wider social and political arenas. This study contextualises Conolly's activities and the lifestyles of other powerful landowners in Irish society in the mid-nineteenth century. At the core of this study is Castletown, the most important Palladian house in Ireland. Looking at Conolly, a connection to the wider ascendancy society, places Castletown within a world that, in the twenty-first century, has disappeared.