14‭ June 1884: Count John McCormack was born on this day. He is considered the greatest singer Ireland has ever produced. He was the fourth of eleven children born to Hannah and Andrew McCormack, and one of the five to survive childhood. Though his own parents hailed from Scotland his paternal Grandfather was originally from County Sligo. He was educated locally by the Marists in Athlone where his singing abilities were first recognised. 

I was nine and a slip of a lad and shy.‭ It was in the Marist brothers' school on a feast day, when Dr. Woodlock, Bishop of Clonmacnoise, was the guest of honour. I'll not forget the sensation at hearing the words, which Brother Hugh whispered in my ear. ‘We want you to sing, John, for Bishop Woodlock’. With that the good man lifted me upon a table, and left me looking at the gathering…I think they must have liked it. They seemed to. I had no extensive repertoire, but what I knew I knew. And the singing spirit must have been there. Like the man born to be hanged, I possibly was intended to sing.

Afterwards he won a Scholarship to study at the Diocesan College in Summerhill County Sligo.‭ He completed his studies there in 1902. After considering trying his hand at various lines of work he was offered a position with the Palestrina Choir in Dublin’s Pro Cathedral. Vincent O’Brien, the choir master & organist there, saw the great potential in him and recommended for the position of Tenor with the Choir:

He was organist of the Marlborough Street Cathedral,‭ in Dublin; a splendid musician, a fine man, and a staunch friend. He had vision and appeared, intuitively, to feel that all I needed was study and opportunity to achieve a goal worthy of serious aspiration.

It was the beginning of a hugely successful career that saw him perform around the World to International acclaim. He was hugely popular in the USA in the 1920s and his celebrity status fore shadowed that of singers like Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley in the fame he achieved at that time.

He is best remembered at home though for his magnificent performance of César Franck's‭ Panis Angelicus to the hundreds of thousands who thronged Dublin's Phoenix Park for the 1932 Eucharistic Congress. Pope Pius XI made him a Count of the Church in 1928. He died at Booterstown in Dublin on 16 September 1945 and is buried in Deans Grange Cemetery.

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13‭ June 1798: The Battle of Ballynahinch/Baile na hInse, (town of the isle) was fought on this day. This battle occurred in County Down between the insurgents of the United Irishman under ‘General’ Henry Munro [who was actually a linen merchant from Lisburn] and the forces of the Crown under ‬Major-General George Nugent ‭. The town had actually been seized some days previously by local insurgents but on the day before the battle a well-armed force of some 2,000 military under Nugent entered it and set about upending the place. That evening there was a great deal of skirmishing and much of Ballynahinch was ransacked as the soldiers and Yeomanry engaged in drinking and revelry. The insurgents had established themselves on the hills to the south and east of the town and had in all about 5,000 men under arms. However most were armed only with pikes and any attempt to meet the Crown Forces in open battle was bound to be a massacre. The superior firepower along with the discipline and cohesion of the soldiers was bound to tell against the insurgents if the British Army was to march out the next morning in line of battle. 

Munro’s officers urged him to launch a night attack upon the town and catch the enemy off guard,‭ as they were audibly not in a coherent state that night anyway to resist a determined assault. But he hesitated to do so as he did not have confidence in his men that they could carry off with any degree of certainty such a risky manoeuvre as a night attack. So the hours of darkness slipped away and with it a substantial number of the men who had gathered under the flag of the United Irishmen. Many of them in turn lacked confidence in Munro’s judgement and his obvious lack of experience. They felt that defeat was all but inevitable if the Crown Forces gained the initiative. It was readily apparent that when Nugent marched his men out the next day that the odds would be stacked against them. Even though the United Irishmen had the numbers the Crown Forces would be able to use their Combined Arms tactics of Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery to devastating effect upon them.

An eyewitness reported:

A mixed and motley multitude met the eye.‭ They wore no uniforms, yet they presented a tolerably decent appearance, being dressed no doubt in their Sunday clothes, some better and some worse. The only thing in which they all concurred was the wearing of the green, almost every individual having a knot of ribbon of that colour, sometimes intermixed with yellow in his hat. In their arms there was as great a diversity as in their dress. By far the majority of them had pikes, which were truly formidable instruments in close fight, but of no use in distant warfare ... others wore swords, generally of the least efficient kind, and some had merely pitchforks.

The United Irishmen, Their Lives and Times

By Richard Robert Madden

At daylight Munro finally decided to attack and launched his men against the enemy inside the town.‭ Bloody hand to hand fighting ensued and the fortunes of war ebbed and flowed amongst the burning buildings of the place. At one stage it looked like Victory lay within the grasp of the United Irishmen as the Crown Forces fell back. But they eventually rallied and counterattacked and broke the back of the pikemens brave charges upon their positions.  ‬ 

In the meantime Nugent had directed other columns to come round in the rear of the hillside camps of his opponents and turn their positions.‭ A detachment from the garrison in Downpatrick had arrived under Colonel Stapelton and circled the town to attack Montalto, a commanding eminence skirted by a thick wood. This was where Munro had established his HQ some days prior to the battle.

These developments unnerved his men and caught between the obvious superiority now being gained by the military within the town and the imminent closing off of any viable avenue of escape.‭ ‬This led to the collapse of their morale and a precipitate retreat away from Ballynahinch by the survivors of the battle. Munro attempted to rally his men on Ednavady Hill outside the town but all he could muster by that stage was a motley force of about 150 combatants. With the Crown Forces closing in for the kill they decided to make a break for it and scatter, every man for himself. Munro sought refuge nearby and evaded capture for a few days.

But he was taken through betrayal, brought back to Lisburn and tried and executed within a very short period of time. He was hanged almost within view of his own front door and his head was placed upon display in the Market Square. The town of Ballynahinch itself lay in ruins with almost half the houses within it burned during the engagement and its aftermath. This battle to all intents and purposes ended organised resistance in County Down. In the following days and weeks the military spread out across the Countryside, inflicting many atrocities upon those they suspected of being active participants or silent supporters of the Rising. 

With the passage of time there grew up a legend around this battle that a young woman of some 20 years or so called Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Grey was present on the field of battle where she bravely stood with her menfolk & that the County Down heroine rode into battle riding a white pony and "carrying a stand of colours". In the aftermath she was brutally cut down and killed and buried unceremoniously amongst the slain at Ballycreen near Ballynahinch. It is now not possible to verify what is fact or fiction but there is no doubt that she is the personage best remembered today in association with this battle.

‭ ‬

 

12 June 1922: A ceremony took place in St. George’s Hall at Windsor Castle at which King George V received the Colours of five Irish infantry regiments & one cavalry regiment of the British army who were disbanded OTD. These were: The Connaught Rangers; The Leinster Regiment; The Royal Munster Fusiliers; The Royal Dublin Fusiliers; The Royal Irish Regiment & the South Irish Horse. At the time of their disbandment they contained some 12,000 men the majority would have been Irish or of Irish descent. 

The reason for their abolition was the Treaty between Ireland and Britain in december 1921 which saw 26 counties of Ireland becoming The Irish Free State. As a result the British Armed Forces would no longer be able to actively recruit in the South and thus these regiments coould no longer be sustained with new members to fill the ranks. Another factor was Britain had an overcapacity of men in the British Army at time that it was stretched to the limit financially. This was therefore a case of financial and political necessity allowing the Cabinet to conclude that they would have to go.

That day at Windsor King George V, with emotion in his voice, received the Colours saying:

Your Colours are the records of valorous deeds in war, and of the glorious traditions thereby created. You are called upon to part with them today for reasons beyond your control and resistance. By you and your predecessors these Colours have been reverenced and guarded as a sacred trust - which trust you now confide in me. As your King I am proud to accept this trust. But I fully realise with what grief you relinquish these dearly-prized emblems; and I pledge my word that within these ancient and historic walls your Colours will be treasured, honoured, and protected as hallowed memorials of the glorious deeds of brave and loyal regiments.

Their Colours were laid up at St George's Hall, Windsor Castle, to be kept forever in the care of the King and his descendants.

On their State Visit to the United Kingdom in 2014 the Irish President Michael D. Higgins & his wife Sabina were escorted by The Duke of York to the Grand Stairs in Windsor Castle to view the colours of five Irish regiments of the British army which were disbanded on that day.

11‭ June 1534: The Revolt of Silken Thomas on this day. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald or ‘Silken Thomas’ as he was more popularly known, was a young man of just 21 years of age when he rode through the streets of Dublin with a large band of followers, and entered the Chapter House of St. Mary's Abbey [above] * where the King's Council were awaiting him.

Whereupon with his brilliant retinue of seven score horsemen he rode through the streets to St.‭ Mary's Abbey; and entering the chamber where the council sat, he openly renounced his allegiance, and proceeded to deliver up the sword and robes of state.

A Concise History of Ireland by P.‭ W. Joyce

His father was none other than Garret Óg,‭ the Earl of Kildare, the most powerful man in Ireland. In his father’s absence in England to answer charges against his name Lord Thomas had been appointed the King’s Deputy in his place. But false rumours that Henry VIII had executed Garret Óg reached his ears. He concluded, without waiting to check the veracity of this information, that his father was indeed dead. He felt that no time could be lost in staking out his claim to lead the Catholics of Ireland in opposing Henry and his now openly Protestant Court. He that day renounced his stewardship of being the King’s Deputy in Ireland and declared himself no longer bound to King Henry VIII by word or deed.

Henry VIII treated his defiance of Royal Power as an act of open revolt and confined Garret Óg to the Tower of London,‭ ‬where Garret died two months later. After a bloody Revolt that lasted into 1535 Silken Thomas gave himself up when his forces were defeated and conveyed to London for Trial. He too was placed in the Tower and held in wretched conditions. He wrote home from that place of cold captivity a letter full of pathos:

I never had any money since I came into prison,‭ but a noble, nor I have had neither hosen, doublet, nor shoes, nor shirt but one; nor any other garment but a single frieze gown, for a velvet furred with budge [i.e. instead of a velvet furred with lambskin fur], and so I have gone wolward [shirtless] and barefoot and barelegged divers times (when it hath not been very warm); and so I should have done still, but that poor prisoners of their gentleness hath sometimes given me old hosen and shoes and shirts.

P.‭ W. Joyce

The unfortunate Silken Thomas,‭ born into a life of wealth and privilege, eventually was sent to the gallows. He was hanged alongside five of his captured uncles at Tyburn, London in February 1537. His epic Revolt marked the start of a series of Wars in Ireland against the growing power of a centralised Monarchy committed to enforcing English Royal Rule and the Protestant Religion in this Country.‬ 

 

 

10 June 1688: James Francis Edward Stuart, aka ‘King James III of England and VII of Scotland’ was born on this day. He was born at St James Palace, London. He was the only legitimate son of James II by his wife Mary of Modena. His birth triggered a Constitutional Crises in these islands as he was baptised a Catholic and stood to inherit his fathers’ Realms in due course. Later that year occurred the ‘Glorious Revolution’ and the deposition and flight of James II to France. It was rumoured that the actual infant died at birth and a substitute was surreptitiously brought into the birth chamber inside a Warming Pan. While this is almost certainly a piece of propaganda spread by the enemies of his father such rumours undermined his status in England in particular when he reached maturity. His birth thus triggered a series of actions that led to the ‘War of the Two Kings’ that was fought upon the soil of Ireland between 1689 and 1691.

On the death of James II in 1701 he proclaimed himself King James III. He was recognised by the followers of the Stuart Cause as the legitimate successor to his father’s Kingdoms. He was also acknowledged as such by a number of Continental Powers incl France & Spain. He also had many secret adherents within England, Scotland and Ireland. As a young man he saw action in the War of the Spanish Succession and twice attempted to establish himself upon the Throne. In 1708 he was thwarted in a landing upon the coast of Scotland. His best chance came upon the death of Queen Anne in 1714 when the Crown was vacant and before George of Hanover (a Protestant) could arrive to take it. But delay proved fatal and James’s Scottish supporters only raised the banner of revolt in late 1715. Their attempt, though initially well backed proved a Fiasco. By the time James landed in December support was ebbing away and after a few weeks he was forced to depart for the Continent. He never saw the island of his birth again. 

Eventually he settled in Rome under the protection of the Papacy where he took up residence at the Palazzo Muti and held a Jacobite Court there with funds provided by the Vatican, the Spanish Monarchy and his supporters. He thereafter lived a long but frustrating life. He married Princess Maria Klementyna Sobieska of Poland in 1719 and had two sons by her. She however died in 1733 and he never remarried. He lived long enough to see his son ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ fail in his attempt to overthrow the Hanoverian Dynasty in 1745/46. He was known in his years of Exile as the ‘Old Pretender’ to his enemies or ‘The King over the Water’ to his friends and admirers in these islands. He died in Rome on 1 January [O.S.] 1766 and is buried in St Peters in Rome. 

In following such a record of broken hopes and unrelieved failure, the initial sense of disappointment yields gradually to a more temperate compassion. There is an indefinable pathos in the spectacle of this tragedy- king, parading his solemn travesty of sovereignty before an unromantic and imperturbable audience. When it is remembered that he lived to see no less than five sovereigns on the English throne, all of whom he had been taught to regard as usurpers, it may help towards understanding how deeply the iron must have entered into his soul.

Macaulay

He is buried in the crypt below St Peters Basicila Rome along with his two sons Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) & Henry Benedict Stuart (Cardinal Duke of York). On top of the sarcophagus is a bronze pillow on which is placed a bronze crown. The inscription reads:

IACOBO·III

IACOBI·II·MAGNAE·BRIT·REGIS·FILIO

KAROLO·EDVARDO

ET·HENRICO·DECANO·PATRVM·CARDINALIVM

IACOBI·III·FILIIS

REGIAE·STIRPIS·STVARDIAE·POSTREMIS

ANNO·M·DCCC·XIX

(To James III, son of King James II of Great Britain, to Charles Edward and to Henry, Dean of the Cardinal Fathers, sons of James III, the last of the Royal House of Stuart. 1819)

 

9 June 597 AD: The Death of Saint Columba (aka 'Columcille' - Dove of the Church) on the island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland.

Columba was the son of Fedlimid and Eithne of the Cenél Conaill people. He was probably born in Gartan, near Lough Gartan, in what is now County Donegal. The earliest surviving evidence – that from his Vita/Life by Adomnán, written about a century after his death – tells us simply that:

‘the holy Columba was born of noble parents having as his father Fedelmid, Fergus’s son, and his mother, Eithne by name, whose father may be called in Latin "son of a ship''

When sufficiently advanced in letters he entered the monastery of Moville under St. Finnian, then at Clonard, governed at that time by Finnian. Another preceptor of Columba was St. Mobhi, whose monastery was at Glasnevin near Dubhlinn [Dublin]. The pestilence that devastated Ireland in 544 AD caused the dispersion of Mobhi's disciples and Columba returned to the North. However his following years were marked by the foundation of several important monasteries at Kells in the north midlands and at Derry in the North. After political troubles at home for which he was found at fault Columba left Ireland and passed over to the island of Iona in 563 AD. Conall, king of Dál Riata gave him the island to use as his base and there he founded his famous Monastery.

The people of Scottish Dál Riata shared a language, culture and political life with the Dál Riata of Ireland, and with Ireland as a whole. It is virtually certain that they also shared the Christian faith. Colum Cille came, therefore, to a Scottish Dál Riata which had already accepted Christianity. We can assume that he came to a landscape already dotted with churches, where priests and even an occasional bishop already ministered to their people.

What Colum Cille brought to Scottish Dál Riata was not Christianity, therefore, but a monastic community of brothers who would live and work and pray together. It is in this light above all that Adomnán seeks to portray him: as the father of monks, founding, teaching and guiding a community. He also portrays him as a man of power – not the secular power of kings and warlords, which Colum Cille had abandoned in Ireland, but the power of the ascetic, the contemplative. He exercises the divine power that is given to those who have rejected wordly power.

Colmcille: Life in Scotland - St Columba Trail

After spending some years among the Scots of Dál Riata, who were related to the Gaels of north east Ulster, Columba began the great work of his life, the conversion of the Northern Picts. After this the remaining years of Columba's life were mainly spent in preaching the Christian Faith to the inhabitants of the glens and wooded areas of northern Scotland. Of course 'Scotland' as such did not exist then as a separate country and indeed the word Scotland comes from the Roman word for the Gaels of Ireland - Scotii.

Saint Columba was famous for his prophecies and on Iona he lived the life of an ascetic while also engaged in the business of the Church in Scotland. Adomnán portrays Colum Cille as actively engaged with the kings of Dál Riata in western Scotland– not only obtaining land from them and blessing particular candidates for kingship, but even inaugurating Áedán mac Gabráin as king in the monastery of Iona.

He also kept in contact with Ireland too and he returned home on occasion even though he was formally exiled. Adomnán says he went back to Ireland when he founded the monastery of Dair Mag (Durrow) between 585 and 597. He also got involved in the politics of the North once again . He returned to Ireland for a conference of kings at which were present Áed mac Ainmirech, king of the northern Uí Néill and eventually king of Tara, and Áedán mac Gabráin, king of Dál Riata. Legend has it that having been told never to put his feet on the soil of Ireland again and agreeing to that he returned wearing shoes of sods of turf in order to keep his promise! Adomnán describes Columcille as using two separate buildings during his daily life - a writing hut and a hut where he slept and ‘where at night instead of straw he had bare rock and stone for a pillow’.

He is also credited with the initiation of a continuous record of Irish History as set down in the Annals- the Iona Chronicle - whose successor scribes recorded the History of Ireland on a year by year basis down to the 17th Century. His 'Life' - Vita Columbae was written by his distant successor the 9th Abbot of Iona, Saint Adomnán. Columba is said never to have spent an hour without study, prayer, or similar occupations. He is the greatest Saint to have come out of Ireland.

 

8 June 1739: John Scott, Earl of Clonmell aka ‘Copper Faced Jack’ was born on this day. Scott was one of the most ambitious and successful men of 18th Century Ireland - and one of the most notorious. His family were of middle income but in early life he befriended one Hugh Carleton and his father helped to finance Scott’s studies at Trinity College Dublin in 1756 and subsequently in Law at the Middle Temple. Admitted to King's Inn in 1765, he was entitled to practice as a Barrister.

In 1769 he was himself elected M.P. for the borough of Mullingar. His ability and determination to rise attracted the attention of the lord chancellor, Lord Lifford, and, at his suggestion, Lord Townshend threw out to him the bait of office. The bait was swallowed with the cynical remark, ‘My lord, you have spoiled a good patriot.’

In December 1774 he became solicitor-general, and in November 1777 he was appointed  attorney-general and a privy Councillor.  But his personal feelings did not influence his political opinions, and to his colleague in London he wrote: 

‘Send us two men, or one man of ability and spirit; send him with the promise of extension of commerce in his mouth as he enters the harbour, unconnected with this contemptible tail of English opposition, meaning well to the king, to his servants, and to the country, and he will rule us with ease; but if you procrastinate and send us a timid and popular trickster, this kingdom will cost you more than America; it will cost you your existence and ours’ 

He refused to be badgered into any premature expression of opinion as to the right of England to bind Ireland by acts of parliament, but astounded the house on 4 May 1782 by announcing ‘in the most unqualified, unlimited, and explicit manner … as a lawyer, a faithful servant to the crown, a well-wisher to both countries, and an honest Irishman,’ that Great Britain possessed no such right, and that if the parliament of that kingdom was determined to be the lords of Ireland, ‘he for his part was determined not to be their villain in contributing to it’

Scott, John (1739-1798)

by Robert Dunlop

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Scott,_John_(1739-1798)_(DNB00)

He was dismissed but on the fall of Portland’s government he was soon restored and was more careful to not offend those above him in a Country and an Age when Patronage was everything to advancement. Being very much a careerist his noted stance on a principal was something ‘out of character’ for a man noted to crave the finer things in Life like power, money and social status.

 He was promoted on 10 May 1784 to be Chief Justice of the King's Bench and at the same time raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Earlsfort of Lisson Earl.  The King's Bench was the principal court of criminal jurisdiction and civil jurisdiction, and its Chief Justice was the most senior judge in Ireland after the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. 

Probably his most notorious act though was his hounding the editor of the Dublin Evening Post, one John Magee who was being sued by an associate of Scott’s called Francis Higgins aka The Sham Squire. The chief justice, influenced by personal and political motives, caused a capias ad respondendum marked £4,000 to issue against Magee. It was a tyrannical act, but in the state of the law perfectly legal, and would, as Scott intended it should, have utterly ruined Magee had not the matter been brought before parliament by George Ponsonby. The discussion greatly damaged his judicial character.

(Dunlop)

In 1789, he was created 1st Viscount Clonmell, of Clonmel, Co. Tipperary and in 1793 he was created 1st Earl of Clonmell. By the 1790s he had an annual income of £20,000 - a Fortune in those days in Ireland.

John Scott was a very able man but one who made a lot of enemies due to his arrogant and somewhat dictatorial manner. He was a man who took little care of his personal appearance and drank and ate to excess.  Though he does not appear to have been a womaniser. In his diary he made frequent resolutions to mend the manner of his ways but does not seem to have followed them through to any effect. He did not suffer fools gladly however and even thought little of his childhood friend Hugh Carleton. His nickname ‘Copper Face Jack’ came from his very ruddy appearance, especially when he had Drink taken - which was often.

While he had reached the pinnacle of success in chosen career of Law it does not seem have brought him much happiness. In 1797, in the last conversation he would have with his wife's cousin, Valentine Lawless, 2nd Baron Cloncurry, he exclaimed:

 'My dear Val, I have been a fortunate man in life. I am a Chief Justice and an Earl; but, believe me, I would rather be beginning the world as a young (chimney) sweep.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scott,_1st_Earl_of_Clonmell

Although his tendency was to make his position subservient to government and his own advancement, he ‘never indulged in attacks on his country,’ and never sought ‘to raise himself by depressing her.’ His reluctance to support the arbitrary measures that marked the course of Earl Camden's administration caused him to lose favour at the castle, and as time went on his opinion was less consulted and considered.  He wrote, in his diary on 13 Feb. 1798, ‘‘I think my best game is to play the invalid and be silent; the government hate me, and are driving things to extremities; the country is disaffected and savage, the parliament corrupt and despised.’

(Dunlop)

He died on the day the Rising broke out 23 May 1798. His subsequent reputation suffered even more damage when his personal diary was published some years later. While not written for public consumption it nevertheless put a further blot on his name as within its pages he vilified even those whom he was considered close to both personally and in Law.

The Legal historian Elrington Ball wrote:

"an extraordinarily able man and an equally ambitious one. As he has revealed to us in his diary he had from the first no misgiving as to the object of his life being personal success, and although he wore out his mind and body in reaching his goal he made it against desperate odds."

Ball, The Judges in Ireland 1221–1921 London 1926 

He was married twice and left a son and a daughter by his second marriage. He lived at Clonmel House 17 Harcourt Street Dublin. Today that street houses one of Dublin’s most popular and notorious [?] nightclubs ‘Copper Faced Jacks’.!!!