This book is the first major academic study of the Ulster Plantation in over 25 years. The pivotal importance of the Plantation to the shared histories of Ireland and Britain would be difficult to overstate. It helped secure the English conquest of Ireland, and dramatically transformed Ireland’s physical, political, religious and cultural landscapes. The legacies of the Plantation are still contested to this day, but as the Peace Process evolves and the violence of the previous forty years begins to recede into memory, vital space has been created for a timely reappraisal of the plantation process and its role in identity formation within Ulster, Ireland and beyond. This collection of essays by leading scholars in the field offers an important redress in terms of the previous coverage of the plantations, moving away from an exclusive colonial perspective, to include the native Catholic experience, and in so doing will hopefully stimulate further research into this crucial episode in Irish and British history.

The settlement of the Hebrides is usually considered in terms of the state formation agenda. Yet the area was subject to successive attempts at plantation, largely overlooked in historical narrative. Aonghas MacCoinnich’s study, Plantation and Civility, explores these plantations against the background of a Lowland-Highland cultural divide and competition over resources. The Macleod of Lewis clan, ‘uncivil’, Gaelic Highlanders, were dispossessed by the Lowland, ‘civil,’ Fife Adventurers, 1598-1609. Despite the collapse of this Lowland Plantation, however, the recourse to the Mackenzie clan, often thought a failure of policy, was instead a pragmatic response to an intractable problem. The Mackenzies also pursued the civility agenda treating with Dutch partners and fending off their English rivals in order to develop their plantation.

In this vivid account, the author punctures some generally held assumptions: despite slaughter and famine, the province on the eve of the Plantation was not completely depopulated as was often asserted at the time; the native Irish were not deliberately given the most infertile land; some of the most energetic planters were Catholic; and the Catholic Church there emerged stronger than before. Above all, natives and newcomers fused to a greater degree than is widely believed: apart from recent immigrants, nearly all Ulster people today have the blood of both Planter and Gael flowing in their veins. Nevertheless, memories of dispossession and massacre, etched into the folk memory, were to ignite explosive outbreaks of intercommunal conflict down to our own time. The Plantation was also the beginning of a far greater exodus to North America. Subsequently, descendants of Ulster planters crossed the Atlantic in their tens of thousands to play a central role in shaping the United States of America.

Traditionally the Reformation has been viewed as responsible for the rupture of the medieval order and the foundation of modern society. Recently historians have challenged the stereotypical model of cataclysm, and demonstrated that the religion of Tudor England was full of both continuities and adaptations of traditional liturgy, ritual and devoti

THE ONLY BOOK ON IRISH HISTORY YOU'LL EVER NEED!From invasions to rebellions, heroic martyrs to pragmatic politicians, industrial development to mass emigration, A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes by renowned Irish historian Jonathan Bardon will take you on a sweeping journey through Irish history, getting behind the historical headlines to reveal the lived experience of Irish people.Written in easy-to-read bitesize episodes, Bardon's original and engaging style will make you feel as though you're alongside William Smith O'Brien and his rebels at the Battle of Widow McCormack's Cabbage Patch, traversing the country to banish snakes and convert Celts with St Patrick, and feasting with the Spanish Armada's Captain Francisco de Cuellar and his wild Irish hosts. From taking up arms with the United Irishmen at Vinegar Hill to standing in solidarity with the workers of the Dublin 1916 Lockout, A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes will take you right to the heart of Irish history.Featuring a cast of characters that leap off the page, from the well-known, like the hero of the War of Independence, Michael Collins, to the quirky, such as Susannah Cibber, the first soprano to sing Handel's Messiah, A History of 250 Episodes will thrill, excite and inform you from start to finish. Whether you dip in and out of episodes or devour it from cover to cover, Bardon's must-have book will teach you everything you've ever wanted to know about Irish history and much, much more beyond.

This book examines the structures and texture of rural social relationships, using one type of document found in abundance over all the four component parts of Britain and Ireland: petitions from tenants to their landlords. The book offers unexpected angles on many aspects of society and economy on estates in the 17th and 18th centuries.

A History of Settlement in Ireland provides a stimulating and thought-provoking overview of the settlement history of Ireland from prehistory to the present day. Particular attention is paid to the issues of settlement change and distribution within the contexts of: * environment * demography * culture. The collection goes further by setting the agenda for future research in this rapidly expanding area of academic interest. This volume will be essential reading for all those with an interest in the archaeology, history and social geography of Ireland.

One of the 'Great Twelve' livery companies of the City of London, the Merchant Taylors' Company has been in existence for some seven hundred years. This new history will chart the remarkable story of the Company and its members from its origins until the 1950s, encompassing the lives and achievements of men such as Sir Thomas White (founder of St John's College, Oxford) and the celebrated chronicler, John Stow, as well as the roles played by the Company in the City and beyond in different periods. As well as looking in detail at the internal life of the Company, the book will also focus on a number of important themes in the wider history of London. These include trade and industry, apprenticeship, the impact of religious change, the foundation of schools and other charities, and the government and politics of the City. In doing so, the book will contribute to an understanding of the aims and activities of the livery companies over the centuries, their ability to adapt to changing circumstances and their relevance in a modern world far removed from that in which they were first established. The History of the Merchant Taylors' Company will appeal to a wide range of people interested in the history of London. It is fully illustrated with more than seventy-five black and white and thirty colour illustrations.

Real understanding of past societies is not possible without including children, and yet they have been strangely invisible in the archaeological record. Compelling explanation about past societies cannot be achieved without including and investigating children and childhood. However marginal the traces of children's bodies and bricolage may seem compared to adults, archaeological evidence of children and childhood can be found in the most astonishing places and spaces. The archaeology of childhood is one of the most exciting and challenging areas for new discovery about past societies. Children are part of every human society, but childhood is a cultural construct. Each society develops its own idea about what a childhood should be, what children can or should do, and how they are trained to take their place in the world. Children also play a part in creating the archaeological record itself. In this volume, experts from around the world ask questions about childhood - thresholds of age and growth, childhood in the material culture, the death of children, and the intersection of the childhood and the social, economic, religious, and political worlds of societies in the past.