20 November 763: The death of King Domhnall mac Murchadha on this day. King Domhnall mac Murchadha was an interesting character. He had retired into a monastery in the year 740 but was active again by 742. He went back into monastic life in 744 but at the same time remained as King of Tara, which he had taken for himself after winning at Seireadh Magh. The most likely explanation is that he became both the Abbot of a great monastery (Clonard?) and King of Tara simultaneously to allow him to exercise control in both civil and religious affairs within his kingdom. It seems to have worked because when he died in 763 he was still the holder of both offices.

 

19 November 1807: The Prince of Wales packet ship and the military transport Rochdale sank in a storm in Dublin Bay killing some 385 people on this day. The Prince of Wales ran onto rocks off Blackrock - the Captain and crew took to the only lifeboat, abandoning the troops onboard. The Rochdale suffered a similar fate near Seapoint, just 20 feet from the shore. The ships were part of a military fleet bound for Liverpool that had left Dublin that morning. Snow and sleet showers backed by a heavy wind developed as the ships made their way out of Dublin Bay and as night came on they were blown onto the sandbanks just off shore where the ships capsized and foundered. It is estimated that some 120 were lost from the Prince of Wales and about 265 from the Rochdale.

Amongst those on board these doomed ships were large contingents of Irish recruits commanded by their Officers and drawn in the main from south Cork and south Mayo. Numerous civilians were also amongst the victims and also the crews of said vessels. Most of the bodies washed ashore in the wake of this double tragedy were buried in graves along the south Dublin shore and some of the slabs erected in their memory can still be seen to this day. Three headstones mark the sites of where the victims were buried including the one above situated beside the Tara Towers Hotel.

Sacred to the memory of the soldiers belonging to His Majesty’s 18th regiment of foot and a few belonging to other corps who actuated by desire of more extensive service nobly volunteered from the South Mayo and different regiments of the Irish Militia into the line and who were unfortunately shipwrecked on this coast in the Prince of Wales packet and perished on the night of 19 November 1807 this tribute to their memory was erected on the tomb by order of General the Earl of Harington commander of the forces in Ireland.

17 November 1890: A divorce court found that Mrs. Katherine O'Shea [above] had committed adultery with Charles Stuart Parnell - custody of her children was awarded to her husband Capitan William O’Shea. Mrs O’Shea however was not to remain Parnell’s wife for long as he died in the following year. Upon his death she lived in relative obscurity and died in England in 1921. She published an account of her life with Parnell in 1914 but her affair with the Irish Leader was frowned upon in polite Society and it was only after she died that her name was somewhat vindicated.

 

Her affair with Parnell, the Leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party and one of the most formidable politicians of his age, was a huge scandal that wrecked the Party he led. The blow to his reputation was one from which he never recovered and he died a broken man.

 

 

 

16 November 1965: The death occurred of William Thomas Cosgrave, 1^st President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State on this day. He became Head of the Provisional Government following the deaths of Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins in August 1922. Born in Dublin in 1880 and educated by the Christian Brothers he joined Sinn Fein in 1905. He was elected to Dublin City Council in 1909 and joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and was actively involved in the 1916 Easter Rising. He was sentenced to death but this was commuted to Life Imprisonment and he was interned in Frognoch Camp. In 1918 he was elected in a bye-election for Kilkenny and in January 1919 took his seat in Dáil Éireann. He was appointed as Minister for Local Government but had only a political role during the War of Independence. When the Treaty was debated in the Dáil he voted in favour of accepting its terms and sided with those who were prepared to implement its conditions across the Irish Free State. On succeeding to the position of President he was ruthless in crushing armed opposition by the IRA to the Treaty. He implemented a series of official executions and the rounding up of suspected political opponents. In the spring of 1923 the Civil war fizzled out as the effects of repression and the lack of support for violent opposition to the new State became apparent.

Once the War was over Liam Cosgrave was able to focus on building an Irish State that could show the World and Britain in particular that the Irish could govern themselves in an effective manner. He had some success here and he established the Irish Sugar Company and the Electricity Supply Board as well as the Agricultural Credit Corporation. He also exercised a prudent control over State’s Finances that paid dividends in ensuring that the balance of payments deficit was kept within limits.

However it was in the political sphere that Cosgrave had the most to contend with and here he had more mixed results. He formed a new Party in 1923 called Cumann na nGaedhael but in the same year he had limited results in a General Election though he held on to power. He gave up any claim to the North following the Boundary Commission fiasco in 1925 in return for a financial agreement with Britain. He also had to deal with a recurrent low intensity campaign by the IRA and widespread political agitation by Republicans in general. The biggest post Civil War Crises he had to face was the assassination of Kevin O’Higgins in 1927 and that almost led to truly draconian measures being introduced. This was averted by Mr De Valera leading FF into Leinster House in September of that year and taking the Oath under protest. Cosgrave then narrowly avoided being forced to relinquish power to his new Parliamentary rival but survived as a result of the Mr Jinks affair.   

A general election was not necessary until the end of 1932, however, Cosgrave called one early in February of that year. There was growing unrest in the country and a fresh mandate was needed for an important Commonwealth meeting that was due that summer.

In the event Cumann na nGaedhael lost it and Dev took over. Cosgrave then became the Leader of the Opposition. In 1933 three groups, Cumann na nGaedhael, the National Centre Party and the Army Comrades Association came together to form a new political force – Fine Gael. General Eoin O'Duffy became it's first Leader. Cosgrave however was retained as the head of the Party in the Free State Parliament. He was then given overall control of the new Party when Eoin O’Duffy was persuaded to step down as President of Fine Gael due to his eccentric behavior. He then led the Party until 1944 when he retired from politics alltogether and he never held Office again.

 

15 November 879 AD: The death of St Fintan on the island of Rheinau in the Rhine on this day.

He was born in Leinster and while still a youth Norse pirates carried him off from Ireland to the Orkney Islands as a slave. Pledging that he would make a pilgrimage to Rome, he jumped ship and dived into the sea and swam to Scotland, where he came under the protection of a local Bishop. Two years later he began his pilgrimage to the continent, travelling first to Rome.

Making his way to Germany he spent his last 27 years with a community of Irish hermits in the Black Forest on the island of Rheinau, near Schaffhausen on the Rhine. He drew up a rule whereby the hermits observed the rules and regulations as did the religious communities of Ireland. Committed to leading by example he spent the last 22 of his 27 years in almost total solitude, during which he was subject to many mystical experiences. The words he heard spoken in his native tongue by demons and angels were recorded by a 10th-century biographer and represent some of the earliest specimens of Gaelic that have survived.  In 1446, Saint Fintan's relics were enshrined at Rheinau.

 

 

14 November 1180: The death occurred of St Laurence O’Toole / Lorcan Ua Tuathail at Eu in Normandy on this day. He had been born in Kildare in about the year 1128 and was educated at the Monastery of Glendalough where he became a prominent member of the religious community there. Being the brother in law of the King of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchada, further enhanced his status. In 1161 he obtained the key ecclesiastical appointment of Archbishop of Dublin and in the following year was consecrated as such in a great ceremony at Christ Church in the city by Gilla Isu the Primate of Armagh. O’Toole’s elevation was a novelty in that he was the first Gaelic leader of the Church in Dublin and that he owed his position to the See of Armagh and not that of Canterbury in England. The Archbishop was a man of great piety and charity and he founded a number of religious houses including the one of All Hallows where Trinity College now stands. Once a year he retreated to Glendalough where he entered a cave for 40 days to fast and pray.

However when Henry II crossed into Ireland and set up Court in Dublin he was a deft enough operator to ensure that he stayed in the Kings’ good standing. He acted as a go between in the delicate negotiations with Rory O’Connor the King of Ireland and Henry in his role as King of England. In April 1178, he entertained the papal legate, Cardinal Vivian, who presided at the Synod of Dublin. He also attended the great Third Lateran Council in March 1179. Pope Alexander III had summoned it with the particular object of putting an end to the schism within the Church and the quarrel between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Papacy. Laurence O’Toole returned home with the title of Papal Legate, which was a mark of the influence he had gained in Rome. However his term in office was to be a short one as in the following year he left Dublin to track down the peripatic Henry in his wanderings across his patchwork quilt Angevin Empire. His mission was to bring urgent matters in Ireland for his consideration. After three weeks of detention at Abingdon Abbey, England he followed Henry II to Normandy. Taken ill at the Augustinian Abbey of Eu, he was tended by Abbot Osbert and the canons of St. Victor in his confinement and it was there that he breathed his last.

11 November 1918: At precisely 11 O'clock in the morning the First World War came to an end on the Western Front in France and Belgium. This was as a result of the activation of the Armistice between Germany and the Allied Powers agreed just days beforehand. In Ireland the end of the War was greeted with relief rather than jubilation.

Many tens of thousands of Irishmen had been killed and wounded in the fighting and to the Nationalists at least their sacrifice was problematical. The set of circumstances that had led John Redmond to advocate Nationalist Ireland’s participation in the War four years beforehand had changed utterly. The men from Nationalist backgrounds who had been publicly cheered to the Fronts in 1914 and 1915 could expect only a muted response when they now came home.

 

The Unionists, esp. in the north east, had more cause for feeling their men's sacrifice had not been in vain but it had been a bloody and costly effort nonetheless. It was clear to everybody that the end of the War meant that new opportunities and new dangers awaited as the troops returned and post war elections beckoned that would prove to be a watershed in Irish Politics.