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Beggars and begging were ubiquitous features of pre-Famine Irish society, yet have gone largely unexamined by historians. Begging, Charity and Religion in Pre-Famine Ireland explores at length for the first time the complex cultures of mendicancy, as well as how wider societal perceptions of and responses to begging were framed by social class, gender and religion. The study breaks new ground in exploring the challenges inherent in defining and measuring begging and alms-giving in pre-Famine Ireland, as well as the disparate ways in which mendicants were perceived by contemporaries. A discussion of the evolving role of parish vestries in the life of pre-Famine communities facilitates an examination of corporate responses to beggary, while a comprehensive analysis of the mendicity society movement, which flourished throughout Ireland in the three decades following 1815, highlights the significance of charitable societies and associational culture in responding to the perceived threat of mendicancy. The instance of the mendicity societies illustrates the extent to which Irish commentators and social reformers were influenced by prevailing theories and practices in the transatlantic world regarding the management of the poor and deviant. Drawing on a wide range of sources previously unused for the study of poverty and welfare, this book makes an important contribution to modern Irish social and ecclesiastical history.

The book is the first full-length study of Irish Ribbonism. It traces its development from its origins in the Defender movement of the 1790s to the latter part of the century when the remnants of the Ribbon tradition found solace in a new movement: the quasi-constitutional affinities of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. This book places Ribbonism firmly within Ireland’s long tradition of secret societies and show that, due to its diversity and adaptability, it stood apart from other similar bodies and showed remarkable longevity not matched by its contemporaries. The book describes the wider context of Catholic struggles for improved standing, explores traditions and networks for association, and it describes external impressions. This study utilises very rich archives in the form of state surveillances records and evidence from spies. ‘Show trial’ proceedings also are examined in detail. Throughout, the book deploys masses of press reportage. Harnesssing such evidence, the book shows that Ribbonism was a sophisticated and durable underground network drawing together various strands of the rural and urban Catholic populace in Ireland and Britain. Operating as a militant bulwark against Orangeism, an immigrant aid society, a social club, a proto-political collective, it also was at times a primitive trade union. Ribbonism operated more widely than previous studies have revealed, and was, in fact, a transnational entity linking Irish communities in Ireland and Britain, with trace elements also in the USA, Canada and Australia.

Covering the period from the Armistice to 1939, the book examines the experiences of Irish soldiers who had fought in the British Army in World War One after they had returned home to the part of Ireland that became the Irish Free State. At the onset of War, southern Irishmen volunteered in large numbers and marched off accompanied by cheering crowds and the promise of a heroes’ welcome home. In 1916, whilst its soldiers fought in the British army, Ireland witnessed an insurrection, the Easter Rising, against British rule. It meant the soldiers returned to a much changed Ireland, that no longer recognised their motives for fighting and which was at war with the country in whose army they had served. It has been long believed that the returning soldiers were subject to intimidation by the IRA, some killed as a retrospective punishment for their service with the Imperial power, and that they formed a marginalised group in Irish society. Using new sources this book argues otherwise and examines their successful integration into Irish society in the interwar years and the generous support given to them by the British Government. Far from being British loyalists, many served in the IRA and the Free State army, and became republican supporters.

Focussing on the years 1842 to 1867, Newspapers and Newsmakers evaluates the impact of the Dublin nationalist press on the Irish nationalist cause in its aspirations to overthrow the 1800 Act of Union and establish an independent Irish nation. The Dublin nationalist journalists were totally immersed in Irish nationalist activities, whether by reporting news or creating it, often risking danger to themselves from the British government. Beginning with The Nation, a newspaper that heralded a new era of Irish political and cultural nationalism, this book charts the Dublin nationalist press’s emphatic role in the promotion of Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal of the Union campaign with its impressive peaceful mass mobilizations, the bitter and turbulent splits between leading Irish nationalists in 1846 and 1848, and the attempted Young Ireland rebellion. Following the temporary downfall of the nationalist movement, and in response to the Great Famine, the Dublin nationalist journalists sought an ideological reconstruction of the Irish nationalist cause that included a long-term commitment to revolutionary nationalism leading to the rise of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Drawing upon critical analyses of the political and literary contents of the Dublin nationalist newspapers, emphasis is placed upon the power of ideas, particularly the impassioned dynamics between constitutional nationalism and revolutionary nationalism. Based on extensive newspaper and manuscript sources, Newspapers and Newsmakers establishes that what was written in the Dublin nationalist press during the mid-nineteenth century had a powerful and enduring influence on the development of Irish nationalism.

This book takes a fresh look at the controversy surrounding the publication of the Book of Sports, the royal declaration which James I and Charles I used to sanction recreations on Sundays. The book explores the cultural battle involving the elites and ordinary people of pre-civil war England, which were caused by the sharp and dangerous tensions between those who wanted to enforce a strict form of Sunday observance and those who enjoyed and championed traditional sports and festivities. The book demonstrates how a new, rigid form of sabbatarianism developed during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and became the hallmark of English puritans, who sought to reform people’s behaviour and to suppress all Sunday recreations. Their zealous attempts to impose their form of Sunday observance and their concerted attack on traditional festivity divided communities, and the book provides a wealth of examples from around the country of conflict over Sunday sports and their attendant socialising. It is an original, refreshing study, which throws new light on early modern social life and disorder, and on how and why James I and Charles I took sides in the cultural conflict over Sabbath observance and recreation. It examines how the impact of the Book of Sports and attitudes to traditional festivity were key factors in England’s eventual descent into civil war and helped to determine allegiances in the war itself. This book makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate surrounding the causes of the deep divisions in early Stuart society.

One of the more bizarre consequences of the English Civil War of 1642-46 was the elevation to celebrity status of a ‘dog-witch’ named Boy. The loyal companion of King Charles I's nephew, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Boy, like his master, was held to possess supernatural powers and was frequently portrayed in the popular literature of the day as a ‘devil’, as a witch or as a witch's familiar spirit. Some measure of the interest which Boy aroused among contemporaries may be gleaned from the fact that no fewer than five separate images of him were produced for public consumption between 1643 and 1644. Many previous scholars have remarked upon the fantastical rumours which circulated about Prince Rupert and his dog, but no one has ever investigated the origins of these rumours or explored how the supernatural elements of the prince's public image developed over time. This book sets out to uncover the true story of Boy – and in the process to shed new light on the fascinating series of collisions and interactions which took place between traditional witch-belief and Royalist and Parliamentarian polemic during the troubled 1640s. [190 words]

This book is a biography of George II. This book sets out to demonstrate the unfairness of charges that George II was a puppet king overshadowed by towering politicians such as Robert Walpole, and later, William Pitt. For a king who ruled for so long (1727–1760), the neglect shown by historians to George II is surprising. He was the last British king to lead an army into battle, at Dettingen in 1743, and his rule included the drama of Culloden in 1746 — the culmination of the war over British succession. The neglect is due chiefly to the lack of easily accessible source material: George II left no diaries, and was not a great letter writer. The book has instead exploited rich archival resources to piece together a figure who was the pivot in an often finely balanced — and sometimes dangerously unbalanced — fledgling political system. In the process of revealing George II to us, it goes further than biography, telling us much about the society and system within which the King functioned. In an era of successive wars between European states – in which George, as Elector of Hanover, was keen to ensure that Britain played a part — there is much here also relating to Britain's role within Europe.

This book discusses the relationship between parents and children in the past, focusing on the ways in which adults responded to the untimely deaths of children, and whether and how they expressed their grief. It engages with the hypothesis of parental indifference associated with the French cultural historian Philippe Ariès by analysing the changing risk of mortality since the sixteenth century and assessing its consequences. The book uses paintings and poems to describe feelings and emotions in ways that challenge traditional disciplinary conventions. The circumstances of infant and child mortality are considered for France and England, while example portraits and poems are selected from England and America. While the work is firmly grounded in demography, it is especially concerned with current debates in social and cultural history, with the history of childhood, the way pictorial images can be read and the use to which literature may be put as historical evidence. This is a wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary study that will add to our understanding both of demographic structures, and the ways in which they have conditioned attitudes and behaviour in the past.