Table Of Content

SEVEN PERIODS OF IRISH HISTORY SEVEN PERIODS OF IRISH HISTORY EDITED BY SHAEMAS O'SHEEL "The Irish Nation has been built upon corpse. and brokenhearts."- ARTHUR GRIFFITH. FLANDERS HALL : Publishers SCOTCHPLAINS, NEWJERSEY COPYRIGHT, 1940 BY SHAEMAS O'SHEEL PRINTED IN U.S.'\'. DEDICATED To the Memoryof the Scot, George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron; the Englishmen, Percy Rysshe Shelley, Leigh Hunt, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Gilbert Keith, Chesterton and Countless Thousands of other Britons Who Have Spoken and Labored for the Liberation of Ireland. v ACKNOWLEDGMENT GrateEul acknowledgment is made to the Eollowing publishers and authors Eor permission to reprint passagesof the booksdesignated: To E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. for passagesErom Seventy Years YOllngby theCountessofFingellandPamelaHinkson. To International Publishers Eor passages from Easter Weell by Brian O'Neill. To Sheed & Ward, Inc., for passages from Henry Graltlln by Roger McHugh. To The Vanguard Pressfor passagesfrom Dell' Robert Emmet byR.W. Postgate, To Whittlesey House Eor passages from Dear Dllrll He" by Helen Landreth. To Seumas MacManus for passages from The Story of the lrisb Race, publishedbytheDevin-AdairCompany. Contents I. SevenCenturies and SevenDays 1 II. Devastations of Ireland in MedievalTimes 16 III. "The Curseof Cromwell" 25 IV. The Faith ofKing William-TheRuinof IrishTrade and Industry-The Dark 18th Century 29 v. The Penal Laws 34 VI. ANation Born, 1798-ANation Crushed, 1800 37 VII. The Union of Sharkand Prey 59 VIII. The Enslavementof the IrishPeasantry- Famine-Evictions 65 IX. The Irish Nation Fights On 84 Bibliography 118 VII I. Seven Centuries and Seven Days ON EASTER Monday morning of 1916, in the city of Dublin, slender columns of young men in the gray green uniforms of the Irish Volunteers or the dark green slouch hats of the Citizens' Army marched through the streets with a purposeful air and came to attention at the foot ofNelson's Pillar. Three men stepped from among the soldiers and faced the citizenswho began to gather. One was Padraic Pearse, young and intrepid, a poet, a dreamer and a doer. Beside him stood a man of the stout frame of a worker, with a resolute face: James Connolly, organizer and leader of the Irish proletariat. The third man, advanced in years, his face and bodystill thin with the marks of fifteenyears of starvation and sufferingin an English prison, wasTom Clarke, head of the secretorganization, The Irish Revolu tionary Brotherhood, the principal mover of the rnornen tous eventsof this day, which were the consummation of a lifetime of indomitable hope and grim determination. The poet Pearse stepped forward-stepped one might say at that moment into Immortality in the memories of men. He began reading to his soldierly companions and fellow citizensthe Irish Declaration of Independence and Proclamation of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic. "Irishmen and Irishwomen. In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flagand strikesfor her freedom. 1