The 1641 Depositions and the History Classroom
Eamon Darcy, author of The Irish rebellion of 1641 and the wars of the three kingdoms (2013), in 2009 organised an exhibition in Trinity College, Dublin of materials, notably the 1641 depositions, concerning the 1641 rebellion. In this chapter, he discuss
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The 1641 Depositions and the History Classroom Eamon Darcy For Mary McAleese, president of Ireland (1997–2011), the turbulent events of mid-seventeenth-century Ireland cast ‘long, brooding shadows’ from which the island only started to emerge in recent times.1 McAleese expressed this view at the launch of the 1641 Depositions Project in Trinity College, Dublin on 22 October 2010, an event that had both academic and political significance. The project was a flagship digital humanities initiative which published a key collection of Irish historical documents in an online (and later print) format.2 The depositions comprise 8,000 witness statements describing events in Ireland in the 1640s that subsequently became the main evidence for the alleged massacres of Protestant settlers in 1641. In later years the depositions were evoked to justify anti-Catholic legislation, or to denigrate calls for home rule and Irish independence. According to some commentators the publication of the depositions would not have been possible without the Good Friday Agreement (1998) which offered hope of a lasting and peaceful settlement for Northern Ireland.3 In keeping with this spirit, President McAleese was joined by Reverend Dr Ian Paisley, Lord Bannside, former first minister of Northern Ireland (2007–8), as official first guest at the launch, and
E. Darcy () National University of Ireland Maynooth, Maynooth, Ireland © The Author(s) 2017 J. Hill, M.A. Lyons (eds.), Representing Irish Religious Histories, Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700–2000, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41531-4_15
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both shared reflections on the publication of the depositions. Noting how the outburst of sectarian tensions in the 1930s and 1960s had prevented attempts to publish the depositions, McAleese expressed confidence that their online publication in 2010 would yield a ‘new history of good neighbourliness, understanding and partnership between all the people and traditions on this island’. She hoped that scholars would now be able to examine the evidence forensically and assess the past in a dispassionate manner, thereby deepening understanding of the events of the 1640s. Paisley acknowledged the 1641 rebellion as a key event for Ulster, and one that shaped his personal outlook. He urged that the depositions be studied by all as a warning about what can go wrong and as an opportunity to learn from the processes that contributed to ‘the tragic story of our land’. This would enable us ‘to know who we are and why we have had to witness our own troubles in what became a divided island’. He lamented the fact that not everyone from Ulster knew the date of the outbreak of the 1641 rebellion as well as their own birthday. Such knowledge would, he argued, facilitate a ‘stable and promising future for everybody’. Mischievously, Paisley concluded his speech by declaring: In the words of Lord Carson, a great man well known to Trinity and to this City, ‘God Save Ulster’. I would be willing now to just stretch a bit harder and I would like to say ‘God
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