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This brief postscript ends the monograph by recalling the Hubert Butler Centenary Celebration held in October 2000 at Kilkenny Castle. The gathering brought together a wide range of Butler's admirers, as well as some of his critics. The then Mayor of Kilkenny, Paul Cuddihy, formally apologized to Butler's family for his social ostracism by the local community at the time of the Papal Nuncio Incident in 1952.

This chapter addresses the conservatism that continued to dominate Irish society during the 1950s and the shift that began to take place in the course of the 1960s. It assesses Butler's efforts to balance his cherished sense of autonomy as a landowning Protestant intellectual with his sense of obligation to participate fully in Irish civic life. It documents the ostracism Butler suffered as a result of the Papal Nuncio Incident and the negative response he received from some of his fellow Protestants for his outspokenness. It records Protestant resentment over the Ne Temere Decree and recounts events surrounding the Fethard‐on‐Sea Boycott of 1957. It assesses Butler's continuing commitment to non‐sectarian nationalism as the South began to liberalize religiously and socially, while the North was overtaken by the violence of the modern Troubles.

This chapter unpacks Butler's commitment to cultural continuity amidst political change, emphasizing his insistence on the value of the Anglo‐Irish legacy to independent Ireland's development. It explores his defence of the eighteenth‐century Ascendancy and his celebration of its more liberal and intellectual members. It identifies his promotion of local cultural life and amateur scholarly pursuit as ideals gleaned from this former age. It examines his own experience as an independent scholar and writer and his sustained critique of professionalized learning. It reviews his research into Irish tribal ancestor figures, culminating in the 1972 publication of his book Ten Thousand Saints. It relates his archaeological research to his advocacy of the conservation of Ireland's built heritage. It reviews the principles undergirding his genealogical interest and his efforts in launching the Butler Society in 1960s.

This chapter traces the prolonged military conflict of 1641-53. It examines the elaborate system of government, with headquarters at Kilkenny, established by the Confederate Catholics, as well as the importation into Ireland of the tactics of the European military revolution. It examines the divisions between Royalist and Parliamentarian among Irish Protestants, the former commanded by the earl of Ormond, as well as the shifting allegiances of the Scottish army established in the north east. The arrival in 1649 of a parliamentary army under Oliver Cromwell, and the controversial massacres at Drogheda and Wexford, initiated the last phase of the war. The victorious parliamentary regime initiated a massive scheme of social engineering, transplanting Catholic proprietors to a small western region while redistributing other lands among English settlers.

GianBattista Rinuccini's first fourteen months in Ireland, from his arrival in October 1645 to his return to Kilkenny after the failure of the campaign against Dublin in December 1646, witnessed some of the most violent transformations of his turbulent nunciature. The backdrop to the unfolding drama both in Britain and on the continent was similarly eventful. In June 1645 the decisive parliamentary victory at the battle of Naseby irrevocably altered the course of the first English Civil War. By the time the Ormond peace was concluded in Ireland in August 1646, all the major garrisons around the royalist capital had also been taken. Rinuccini's first year in Ireland thus witnessed the effective end of the first civil war in England. Rinuccini's violent opposition to the Ormond peace represented a considerable departure from his earlier resigned attitude.

The 1641 rebellion was primarily a movement of the Old Irish of Ulster to overthrow the plantation and restore Catholicism. The Ulster colony had become strongly entrenched — a protestant community, comprising all social classes, whose influence was Scottish in origin, presbyterian in religion, and therefore in dispute with the established church. The confederate Catholics of Ireland was not a confederation in the sense to which the word later came to be restricted. Though what happened in Kilkenny in 1642 might give an impression that it was a confederation or alliance between two parties, the Old Irish and the Old English, what really happened was that a number of the king's subjects came together as individuals and bound themselves by oath to work together to redress certain grievances. In Ireland, as in Scotland, the confederation had a religious basis, because it was as Catholics that the Irish had been subjected to various religious and political disabilities.

The Wars of the Three Kingdoms were a complicated mixture of civil wars, religious wars, wars of conquest, and wars of national liberation. The wars in Ireland and Scotland also demonstrated how the affairs of the Three Kingdoms were inextricably linked together. The civil wars in Ireland were complicated by the presence of four armies: a Royalist army, an army of Scots Covenanters, the Catholic Confederate army, and the ultimately victorious Parliamentary forces, which imposed a harsh peace settlement. In Scotland, the Covenanting Army compelled Charles I to recognize the Presbyterian religious settlement before being defeated by the New Model Army. The Cromwellian conquest of Scotland led to a more generous peace settlement than was the case in Ireland, because the Parliamentarians did not regard the mostly Protestant Lowlanders as being alien like the Catholic Irish and the Highlanders from the Isles, and also because the peace settlement was administered by the more moderate General George Monck. The Cromwellian conquest failed to bring complete peace to the two Celtic kingdoms, and guerilla warfare continued for some years afterwards.

The fact that the population of the island was made up of two elements, Gaelic Irish and Old English, was the central feature of Irish life throughout the 16th century. From the time of the statutes of Kilkenny to the reign of Henry VIII, English policy had sought to maintain this duality. This chapter discusses the assertion of sovereignty of the king and ecclesiastical revolution in 1534 to 1547. The assertion of sovereignty was accomplished by the parliament St Léger summoned in 1541. The closing years of Henry VIII's reign were peaceful, if, for the English government in Ireland, poverty-stricken, and, for the Dublin officials, acrimonious.

Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century was characterized by widespread poverty, and a large part of the population was completely dependent on the potato for subsistence. When a blight destroyed the crop from 1845 onward, Ireland suffered a famine that resulted in nearly one million deaths. The poor of Kilkenny City and County were devastated by the famine, and thousands sought help in the union workhouse. As mortality rates increased in the institution and local city cemeteries overfilled with recent burials, there was no other choice than to resort to intramural interments. Despite the workhouse’s logistical and economic difficulties, the deceased inmates were buried in shrouds and coffins, suggesting an attempt by the workhouse management to maintain to some degree the dignity of the famine victims.

Relatively little is known about the lives of the poor in Ireland during the nineteenth century. Bioarchaeological analysis of skeletal remains from the Kilkenny Union Workhouse mass burials indicate that they are of average stature compared to contemporaneous skeletal populations in Ireland, Britain, and North America. The paleopathological analysis reveals that many suffered from dental disease and joint pain, and trauma frequencies appear slightly higher compared to other nineteenth-century population groups. A high frequency of clay-pipe facets in both adult male and female dentitions reveals that many were smokers, and this may be a reflection of their social class.

This chapter discusses the following: the colonial ruling class covering the greatest magnates, magnates of the second rank, churchmen in administration, and the justiciars; the colony under strain covering the towns, the Kilkenny parliament of 1341, and the crisis of 1376; English policy towards Ireland covering basic principles, Ireland becomes a financial liability, the erosion of legal uniformity, Edward III's projected expedition, the ordinances of 1351, the expeditions of Lionel of Clarence, 1361–66, the statute of Kilkenny, Richard II's expeditions, and the ultimate bankruptcy of English policy; and the Irish inter Anglicos covering discrimination in English law and Irish clergy among the English.

This chapter highlights the two communities, Kilkenny and Belfast, that had each been shaped by a great aristocratic dynasty. It narrates the power of both families and how it drastically diminished in the early eighteenth century. Kilkenny retained its status as an inland regional capital with an old urban fabric, a Catholic business community and a weak Protestant presence. Belfast, on the other hand, was much more of a colonial town (in every sense) than Kilkenny, an international trading hub dominated by a wholesale merchant community that was overwhelmingly Presbyterian. The chapter focuses more on eighteenth-century Belfast, its general merchants trading overseas and its physical transformation. Despite the ease of navigation in Belfast Lough, the town lay too far north to attract British or European vessels destined for southern Europe, nor was it optimally placed as a transatlantic stopover. The chapter also elaborates on the transatlantic partnership of Thomas Gregg and Waddell Cunningham, which principally involved the export of Irish linen and the importation of flaxseed, grain and flour. Finally, the chapter discusses the merchant community that benefited most from the growth of the passenger trade: Derry. It also explores how Drogheda became the largest grain market in Ireland, then follows the growth of Dublin's international trade.

The aim of this chapter is to provide a critical perspective on the public debates surrounding the Kilkenny case, an area that has hitherto been largely overlooked in academic research. A central issue is whether the inquiry team, the media and key stakeholders attributed responsibility for ‘why action to halt the abuse was not taken earlier’ to the individual practitioners involved in the case (doctors, police, social workers) or to the system and structures within which they operated. Comparisons will be made with the UK, where a number of high profile inquiries ascribed responsibility for professional ‘failures’ to individual practitioners, who were subsequently pilloried in the media. The chapter also consider the controversy surrounding the sentencing of the abuser. While the focus of public anger in high profile child abuse scandals is often on social workers and child protection, in the Kilkenny case much of the initial outrage was targeted at the judge and the criminal justice system. Finally, the chapter will explore the ‘emblematic’ features of the case – what appeared to be the wider implications of the Kilkenny case for Irish society at that time?