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    St Patrick to Grattan: Selected Irish Lives
    St Patrick to Grattan: Selected Irish Lives
    St Patrick to Grattan: Selected Irish Lives
    Ebook50 pages47 minutes

    St Patrick to Grattan: Selected Irish Lives

    By Brian Igoe

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    About this ebook

    A short glimpse into some selected Irish Lives, from St Patrick to Grattan, to celebrate St Patrick's Day. These are two or three page 'potted' biographies of two Saints (Saints Patrick and Colmcille), a great King (Brian Boru), a great Earl (Gareth Fitzgerald, 8th Earl of Kildare), a great Businessman (Charles Bianconi), Oliver Cromwell, and a great Politician, Henry Grattan.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrian Igoe
    Release dateMar 12, 2014
    ISBN9781311817464
    St Patrick to Grattan: Selected Irish Lives
    Author

    Brian Igoe

    You don’t need to know much about me because I never even considered writing BOOKS until I was in my sixties. I am a retired businessman and have written more business related documents than I care to remember, so the trick for me is to try and avoid writing like that in these books…. Relevant, I suppose, is that I am Irish by birth but left Ireland when I was 35 after ten years working in Waterford. We settled in Zimbabwe and stayed there until I retired, and that gave me loads of material for books which I will try and use sometime. So far I have only written one book on Africa, “The Road to Zimbabwe”, a light hearted look at the country’s history. And there’s also a small book about adventures flying light aircraft in Africa. And now I am starting on ancient Rome, the first book being about Julius Caesar, Marcus Cato, the Conquest of Gaul, (Caesar and Cato, the Road to Empire) and the Civil War. But for most of my books so far I have gone back to my roots and written about Irish history, trying to do so as a lively, living subject rather than a recitation of battles, wars and dates. My book on O’Connell, for example, looks more at his love affair with his lovely wife Mary, for it was a most successful marriage and he never really recovered from her death; and at the part he played in the British Great Reform Bill of 1832, which more than anyone he, an Irish icon, Out of Ireland, my book on Zimbabwe starts with a 13th century Chief fighting slavers and follows a 15th century Portuguese scribe from Lisbon to Harare, going on to travel with the Pioneer Column to Fort Salisbury, and to dine with me and Mugabe and Muzenda. And nearer our own day my Flying book tells of lesser known aspects of World War 2 in which my father was Senior Controller at RAF Biggin Hill, like the story of the break out of the Scharnhorst and Gneisau, or capturing three Focke Wulfs with a searchlight. And now for my latest effort I have gone back to my education (historical and legal, with a major Roman element) and that has involved going back in more ways than one, for the research included a great deal of reading, from Caesar to Plutarch and from Adrian Goldsworthy to Rob Goodman & Jimmy Soni.

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      Book preview

      St Patrick to Grattan - Brian Igoe

      Selected Irish Lives.

      A collection of selected summarised biographies Irish people who for one reason or another have made their mark on the Story of Ireland.

      Brian Igoe

      Copyright © 2014 by Brian Igoe

      Smashwords Edition

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Contents.

      St. Patrick 387 – 493

      St. Colmcille c.520 – c.595

      Brian Boru (c. 941 - 1014)

      Gerald Fitzgerald, 8th Earl of Kildare (1456?–1513)

      Oliver Cromwell 1599 - 1658

      Napper Tandy (1737 – 1803)

      Martha Witherington Tone (1769 – 1849)

      Charles Bianconi (1786 – 1875)

      Henry Grattan (1746 - 1820)

      St. Patrick.

      By the 5th century the Celts had divided Ireland into five Fifths, Ulster, Meath, Munster, Leinster and Connaught, the origins of the four Provinces. Our knowledge of this period is skimpy. This was a time before the Monasteries and the learning and writing they did so well. From that Monastic writing comes most of what we know of Irish history. Before that writing, our history is largely confined to folk tales and folk heroes. Niall of the Nine Hostages was one such. He seems to have been a king for 30 odd years, around 400 A.D. He is said to have been an ancestor of the O’Neills. He probably ruled from Tara. He probably controlled the north. He has been linked with St. Patrick. Quite a few of the stories told by 6th and 7th century writers like Muirchu and Tírechán and may well have some substance, since the concept of detailed verbal recording was practiced by Druid and Christian Bards to a quite incredible degree. They developed prodigious memories. But we don’t really know any more than was described by Patrick himself in his own writing.

      St Patrick did write. In Latin. His best known writing is his Confessio. This was an autobiographical confession, and he probably wrote it around the year 450. I base this article on it – but you are bound to find very credible evidence for variations on the theme. There are countless stories about him, but many may be about other missionaries, in particular one named Palladius, a Gallo Roman who was working in Ireland before Patrick’s arrival and whose achievements have often been attributed to Patrick.

      Patrick wrote that he was born in a place he called Bannavem Taberniae, but we don’t know where that was. The question has been endlessly researched. There are innumerable suggested locations, from Somerset to Scotland. The Scots candidate is a place near Dunbarton, on the west coast. This seems unlikely to me. The Romans never really penetrated that far north, and he was certainly Romanised, if not of Roman blood. Most seem to agree that it was somewhere near Carlisle in north west England, possibly on Hadrian’s Wall. Hadrian’s Wall was already ancient by the time of Patrick’s birth around 415 AD.

      The Romans who built the Wall were withdrawn shortly before Patrick was born. They were withdrawing from England for ever then, so his family is likely to have been a British one rather than a Roman, although educated and Romanised. His name is a bit of a mystery. One source says he was ‘actually born …. Maewyn Succat, and appears to have been Roman by ancestry, with the Latin name Magonus Succetus’. But I have been unable to find any supporting evidence for that. His father, Calpornius, was a Church Deacon and his Grandfather was a Priest. Not,

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