O’Neill and his army marched south from Ulster to meet the enemy while his ally Red Hugh O’Donnell marched in from the west. But once the Irish armies were in place, O’Neill and O’Donnell began arguin...
I'd endured his nonsense as long as I was able before telling him that Mrs. Fournier's life was her own business and that if he wished to make himself useful to me he would point out the sights and ex...
And the Church’s views on marriage were nothin’ short of ridiculous. It had to be celebrated in public, and the marriage was permanent, for mercy’s sake. We preferred to do things more clandestinelike...
ROBERT DEVEREAUX, EARL OF ESSEX, was taken to the place of execution at Tower Green on February 25, 1601. Standing before the crowd in a scarlet waistcoat, Essex made his last speech—a rather long one...
For a moment in time, a man knew me for who I was and, without reservation, loved me for who I was. How can I now live knowing no one will ever see me again in such a perfect light? Hear me as I wish...
When they’d crested the final hill, the huge gathering of clans spread out below, she’d turned to him. This is what we call a ‘booley’—summer grazing for our cattle. But there’s a house, he said, perp...
TIBBOT NE LONG BURKE, hard-pressed to choose sides in the Irish rebellion, finally made his decision at the battle of Kinsale. On his own volition he mustered a force of three hundred men and marched...
I remember a fierce debate that my father and Gilleduff had one afternoon sittin’ over the roast at the long booley table. They were talkin’ of King Henry the Eighth’s Surrender and Regrant program, a...
The summers were a sight better, for we moved—the lot of us—outdoors to my father’s booleys. These were makeshift structures, long and narrow, and thatched with rushes, built new each year and set in...
Posso não ter suficientes qualidades para ser vossa rainha, senhor, mas tenho demasiadas para ser apenas vossa amante.
It is important to understand this period of Irish rebellion, not least because of the light it throws on events in Ireland ever since. England persists in occupying and claiming dominion over Irish s...
Era riuscita a tenere con se un pezzo dell'anima di sua madre, che avrebbe per sempre fatto parte di lei, una spina dorsale per mantenerla forte negli anni a venire, un secondo cuore che avrebbe battu...
News arrived several days later of the appalling defeat of Elizabeth’s army by the Irish rebels at Blackwater Fort—a defeat now infamously known as the Battle of the Yellow Ford. The Earl of Tyrone—in...
Why are there no queens in the deck? I asked rather suddenly. It seems odd. Suzanne Brantôme, on my left, and Mimi La Salle, on my right, smiled knowingly, and I felt foolish. But Marguerite did not s...
What’s more—O’Neill’s eyes brimmed with tears—they’ve a cause, Grace. She placed her hand over his. I know that, Hugh. ’Tis an ‘Irish cause,’ and we’ve never known that here before. There’s not anothe...
We Irish were alone, of all countries, in this way of choosing our leaders. Everywhere else in the world ’tis a firstborn son who’s heir to the title—in England, your primogeniture—and no questions as...
ELIZABETH I, the queen who many believed waited in vain for Essex to beg a reprieve from his death sentence, suffered agonies after his passing. Despite the victory at Kinsale and achieving her goal o...
During the writing of this book, I found myself questioning why the sixteenth-century history of the Irish-English conflict—the Mother of All the Irish Rebellions—has been utterly ignored or forgotten...
Now the harpist and bard had taken their places under the roof of the three-sided booley house, and guests were wandering from the table to hear them play and sing.