Tag: Cromwell

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Kilmacduagh – 1933

Posted on by The Burren and Beyond

Connacht Tribune 7th January, 1933 p.11 (abridged)

Kilmacduach Wikimedia Commons
Kilmacduach
Wikimedia Commons

Kilmacduach (Cill Mac Duach – Mac Duach’s Church), County Galway, three and a half miles from Gort, is situated in rather bleak country on the Clare border.  St. Colman Mac Duach founded a monastic settlement there in the seventh century.  He spent the earlier part of his life as a hermit in the wilds of Clare, and many are the legends told about him and the holy wells dedicated to him in the neighbourhood.  Then, having the good fortune, like most of the Connacht saints, to belong to a royal family, he received a grant of land at the present Kilmacduach from his kinsman, King Guaire.

There are several ecclesiastical ruins. The Cathedral of the old diocese of Kilmacduagh is a large building, but ruined.   The west gable and doorway and part of the side-wall, built of large polygonal stones, are ancient, and probably part of St. Colman’s original church; but the rest of the church is fifteenth century. There is a good doorway in the north wall of the nave. North of the Cathedral is Teampal Iun (St. John’s Church) with a fifteenth century nave.  The east windows, round-headed, displays the graceful Irish Romanesque style at its loveliest.  The opes are only eight and a half inches wide but eight feet high, with rich mouldings on the internal jambs and external reveals.  A slender torus encloses the whole window.  The south windows, of one light, with a hood moulding, is almost as beautiful.  The piers of the chancel arch are transepts, but preserve some of the best points of the Irish Romanesque style.  They consist of three engaged pillars, with sculptural capitals and bases.  There are quoinshafts to the chancel, beautifully pointed.  This church was evidently built between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, before the Norman invasion disturbed the place of the bishops of Kilmacduach.

There are remains of several other churches, and some tombs, notably those of the O’Shaughnessys, in whose territory the village stands.  St. Colman’s reputed tomb is shown nearby.

The Round Tower is one of the finest in Ireland, and is nearly perfect. It belongs to the”fourth” type, with a typical semicircular arch to the doorway, built with three stones.  It was probably built at the same time as Teampul Iun.  It is 112 feet high with a base circumference of sixty-five and a half feet.  The base has a plinth of large stones dressed to the round and the top has been restored with inferior masonry.  The tower leans some four feet out of the vertical, the result probably of a subsidence of the foundations, though cannon balls fired at it by Cromwell’s soldiers is the reputed cause.  The numerous windows are triangular, with inclined sides.  From the tower there is a wonderful view, as the builders intended there should be, across miles of country, and over a good part of Galway Bay.

Ed. Lynam

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Cromwell’s slaves – 1658

Posted on by The Burren and Beyond

Oliver Cromwell's signature before becoming Lord 'Protector' in 1653, and afterwards. Wikipedia.org
Oliver Cromwell’s signature before becoming Lord ‘Protector’ in 1653, and afterwards.
Wikipedia.org
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THE INTERMOUNTAIN CATHOLIC 1ST JULY 1905, P3
CROMWELL IN IRELAND
IRISH PEOPLE SOLD INTO SLAVERY
The London “Athenaeum” has published the following letter:
23 Leeson Park, Dublin

In your issue of April 29, Mr W.F.P. Stockley remarks that “many people would like to have the evidence for and against Cromwell’s sending Irish prisoners to the West Indies.” Prendergast, in his “Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland,” (London, Longman 1865) quoting in part from the Ofder Books of the Commonwealth of England for the Affairs of Ireland, preserved in the Record Towre (sic.), Dublin Castle, wrote as follows:

“After the summer Assizes of 1658, Sir Charles Coote, Lord President of Connaught, and Colonel Sadleir, governor of Galway, were directed to treat with Colonel Stubbers or other merchants about having a properly victualled ship for eighty or one hundred prisoners ready to sail with the first fair wind to the Indian Bridges, the usual landing place in the Barbadoes, or other English plantations, thereabouts in America. These were proprietors who had been sentenced to death for not transplanting but had been pardoned by his excellency. At Barbadoes the prisoners were to be delivered to certain merchants (who were to pay the cost of transportation), all except ten, who were to be consigned to a person to be speedily named. This was a Mr. Edward Smyth, a merchant resident at the Barbadoes. His lot, however, was afterward increased to twelve, ten men and two women, and upon receiving them at the Indian Bridges, or elsewhere in that island, he was to pay Colonel Stubbers four pounds per man for transportation and victuals.”

Prendergast gives in a series of footnotes references to the various pages of the Order Books in which the entries are to be found which justify his statements. In Hardiman’s “History of Galway”, p 134 it is stated that Stubbers transported from the city to the West Indies no fewer than 1,000 persons, whom he there sold as slaves. A letter to Lord Byron in Carte’s “Collection,” vol. II, p. 412 asserts that the thirty survivors of the citizens and garrison of Drogheda “all that were left of them” after five days of massacre were shipped to the West Indies to be sold as slaves.
WILLIAM F. DENNEHY