The Irish staple, which dated from the thirteenth century, was initially established to regulate the trade of basic, or staple, goods such as wool and hides which could only be sold to foreign merchants in designated ‘staple’ towns—originally Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Drogheda. It also provided a sure way for traders to recover their debts. … Read more
Among the various terms applied to works of reference, ‘atlas’ has now become the most user-friendly, more companionable than ‘companion’ and certainly less repellent than ‘dictionary’, ‘directory’ or ‘encyclopaedia’. To match its changing semantic context, the typical modern atlas has fewer and simpler maps than its mid-century predecessors; it also has more non-cartographic illustrations, especially … Read more
In every sixteenth century campaign in Ireland as elsewhere disease was a greater killer than battle wounds. Field hospitals and army surgeons tried to cope with both. For English survivors welfare measures were often taken back home on their return but efforts to rehabilitate the sick and wounded were also made in Ireland. However, information … Read more
It must have seemed a God-given set of circumstances: in Ireland after the Williamite war many areas of depopulated and unproductive countryside; in Europe several hundred thousand displaced persons ready to migrate with their families, their small means and considerable skills. And to fit the two together were three key people: the begetter of ‘Ie … Read more
by Nicholas Canny It is a commonplace that the merit of any piece of historical investigation can be judged by the sources employed and by the questions asked by the historians of those sources. One of my silent criticisms of the work of the earlier generation of historians who had studied early modern Ireland was … Read more