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4. David Edwards

Biography

I am a Dubliner, born and raised in Perrystown, and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. At Trinity I was fortunate to study under Ciaran Brady, Helga Robinson-Hammerstein, Aidan Clarke and LM Cullen, outstanding early modernists whose lectures drew me into the period and left me wanting to know more; while from James Lydon and Ian Robinson I developed an abiding interest in the medieval period. On my arrival at UCC in 1993 I was able to merge the two areas, partly to plug a gap in the department's teaching, but also to pursue my research interests, which by then had begun to explore continuities between late medieval and early modern Ireland in order the better to identify and measure some of the profound political and social, religious and cultural changes that occurred during the 1500s and early 1600s.

Manuscript Studies/Irish Manuscripts Commission

One of the biggest problems affecting the proper study of Irish history circa 1450-1640 has been the shortfall in available documentary sources from all parts of the country because of the destruction wrought by the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and, worse still, by the blowing up of the old Public Record Office in Dublin by IRA volunteers in 1922. Together with my friend Brian Donovan I attempted to help rectify this situation by conducting a search for surviving Irish historical documents in local and regional archive centres in Great Britain; our search took seven years, running in tandem with our PhD theses. Eventually it bore fruit as a monograph published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission in 1997, British Sources for Irish History, 1485-1641: A Guide to manuscripts in local, regional and specialised repositories in England, Scotland and Wales. (There is also a handlist of earlier material published in Analecta Hibernica no. 37 (1998)). While never compensating for all that has been lost, the 'British Sources' project did succeed in locating and recovering for scholarly use several thousand documents that otherwise would have remained in obscurity. In 2006 I became a Director of the Manuscripts Commission by ministerial appointment, a position that has enabled me to help others search out and prepare editions of key primary materials of late medieval/early modern date. Such work will need to continue a long time before Irish historians can match the range and depth of insights of medievalists and early modernists in Britain. 

Regional studies: the changing world of the lordships

Because of my medievalist foundations I have been inclined to examine developments in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Ireland from a variety of local and regional perspectives, rather than from the windows of Dublin Castle. With the great bulk of the country in 1500 controlled by approximately seventy native lords and lineages of different ethnicities - 'Old Irish'/Gaelic Irish, 'Old English'/Anglo-Irish, and Gaelic Scottish - I have tried to discover how the advent of direct English rule after 1534 impacted on the lords' territories and the communities over which they ruled. The large territories of the Butler earls of Ormond was the focus of my early work, and culminated in my 2003 monograph study, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515-1642, besides numerous essays and articles. It broke new ground by exploring the fortunes of a major Anglo-Irish dynasty and its subjects and followers through both the Tudor conquest and the ensuing Early Stuart colonisation and Protestantisation of the country. By covering a longer timeframe it was possible to identify the extent to which an important region, under the heel of strong and adaptable rulers,  could withstand external pressures for decades yet ultimately, like other areas, it had to capitulate as the power of the central government pressed in, with explosive consequences. 

My work on the Butlers and their followers drew upon the enormous Ormond archive in the National Library of Ireland and the Bodleian Library. Since then I have investigated the Gaelic experience of conquest, colonisation and Protestantisation through the papers of the MacGiollapadraigs of Ossory, which though small in number are rich in detail. I have also delved into the experiences of the O'Byrnes of Wicklow, the O'Briens of Thomond, the O'Donnells of Tyrconnell, the Cruises of the Pale, and the Fitzgerald earls of Desmond.

Colonialism in action: Richard Boyle, 1st earl of Cork

My current principal project, funded by the Irish Research Council, focusses on the career and estate of the notorious 'New English' adventurer Richard Boyle, 1st earl of Cork, whose land-grabbing activities in Munster and parts of Connacht and Leinster helped to transform the social and economic life of early seventeenth-century Ireland. Besides tracking definitively his acquisitions and investments drawing upon his personal papers in the National Library and Chatsworth House, I hope to establish the extent to which he re-peopled large parts of southern Ireland with English and Welsh settlers and artisans to create a supposedly model English colony, and how he consolidated this through his relations with the native Gaelic and Anglo-Irish inhabitants who bordered his lands. Boyle's archive is extraordinarily rich, possibly the most complete for any subject of the crown in seventeenth-century Ireland, and properly approached affords a remarkable opportunity to observe the creation of a great colonial estate piece by piece, from the ground up - something simply impossible for any other colonial figure of the time. While much of what Boyle did was new and was broadly typical of the behaviour of colonial adventurers elsewhere in the seventeenth century, it is also becoming apparent that he was deeply conscious of the medieval heritage of southern Ireland, and he looked to draw upon it and manipulate it the better to acquire legitimacy in native eyes. Careful reading of his estate papers reveals a great deal about the abiding influence of longstanding local Gaelic and Anglo-Irish lineages whose lands Boyle acquired, and about how he relied on native intermediaries as well as English government power to first negotiate acquisition from them and then to manage their displacement.  The picture that is emerging is of a much more pragmatic, and less ideologically driven character than was once thought. Besides a commitment to the Irish Research Council to complete a monograph sudy of his estate (currently under way) it is my intention to publish a major edition of his estate papers and his letter-book as Lord Justice of Ireland 1629-33, and ultimately, in several years' time, a full-length biography of one of the most significant figures of Ireland's 'Age of Plantations'.

Violence and political change

•The extent to which the post-1603 Scottish settlers who arrived in Ireland to benefit from the plantations co-operated with, or separated from, their English colonial partners, and what this tells us about the lead-up to the Irish rebellion of 1641. The topic is addressed in detail in my forthcoming edited volume, The Scots in Early Stuart Ireland: Union and Separation in Two Kingdoms (Manchester University Press, 2015).

Research Interests

Power, politics and society in Ireland, 1350-1650; Religion and sectarianism in the Age of Reformations; Migration in Irish and British history, c1500-1640.

I have researched and published on a range of topics dealing with Irish history between 1350 and 1650 (see Publications). My principal area of research inquiry is power and society in Ireland, from the Gaelic resurgence of the fourteenth century to the Wars of Religion in the seventeenth century. My work falls into four related areas: (i) The cultural and political world of the native and colonial lordships; (ii) The violence of English government expansion after 1534 and the Irish response; (iii) Religion and colonialism in Ireland, c.1547-1641; (iv) The searching out and publication of manuscript sources for the history of later medieval and early modern Ireland.  

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