Neil Hegarty > Quotes

“consciousness. Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1855), Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849), George Eliot’s Silas Marner (1861) and many other such literary portrayals appeared in these years to testify to this growing attention. A novel might have been written about the travails of Davitt’s life too. As a child he was employed in the cotton industry, working in the local mills that resounded to the din of vast and deafening spinning machines that regularly nipped off workers’ limbs and scalps; in 1857, Davitt himself lost an arm to one of these machines and was dismissed from the works without compensation. In his teens, he managed to acquire an education”
― Neil Hegarty, The Story of Ireland: A History of the Irish People

“So long as John remained on the throne, this delicately poised status quo remained in place: with his death, however, it broke down, and new policies began instead to highlight the chasm between native Irish and colonists. Almost immediately, for example, the new statutes of Magna Carta came into effect: the rights of landowners and nobles in the lands settled by the Anglo-Normans were thus guaranteed – but the charter did not extend to the Irish themselves.”
― Neil Hegarty, The Story of Ireland: A History of the Irish People

“the new league, however, this structure was promising: it was a constitutional carapace that sheltered”
― Neil Hegarty, The Story of Ireland: A History of the Irish People

“According to the legends, Christianity first arrived in Ireland on a spring night in AD 433.”
― Neil Hegarty, The Story of Ireland: A History of the Irish People

“If the penal laws were at first defensive in nature, they soon developed into a remarkably dense maze of legislation that encompassed every aspect of daily life. Catholic priests were outlawed; Catholics were prohibited from entering parliament; from voting; from owning firearms; from marrying Protestants or adopting children; from buying land; and from owning a house valued at more than £5. New inheritance laws stipulated that any land left by a Catholic must be broken up among all his children, the idea being to ensure that no large Catholic estates could possibly survive intact for more than a generation or two. Bars were set on Catholic education – ‘no person of the Popish religion shall publicly or in public houses teach school, or instruct youth in learning within this realm’ – leading to the establishment of discreet ‘hedge schools’ across Ireland.”
― Neil Hegarty, The Story of Ireland: A History of the Irish People

“A vast charitable effort swung into action in order to head off widespread famine: a lecture tour of the United States undertaken by Parnell early in 1880 ensured publicity for the plight of Ireland and generated substantial relief funds; the US government dispatched a supply ship, which docked at Queenstown in the spring of 1880; and ships of the Royal Navy landed relief supplies along the west coast. Significantly,”
― Neil Hegarty, The Story of Ireland: A History of the Irish People