Description
Book SynopsisShane O'Neill played a key role in Ireland's story in the sixteenth century, yet he has suffered a peculiar fate. Memorialised in drama, poetry and fiction as 'Shane the Proud', he has been remarkably neglected by historians who have been content - or resigned - to accept the largely personalised accounts of his character and actions, broadcast by his enemies, as a fair estimation of his historical significance. In this extended and critical study of Shane's life and times, Ciaran Brady, leading historian in Early Modern History, returns this neglected and misunderstood historical figure to his rightful place - at the centre of this turbulent period in Irish history. Based on a detailed examination of all the available primary sources, and also on a critical examination of the stories and myths that came to surround Shane, Brady offers an original interpretation that sets Shane against the multi-layered backgrounds of Ulster, Irish and English Court politics of his time - moving away from the conventional cultural stereotypes through which Shane and his contemporaries have been customarily interpreted.In doing so Brady reveals not only the highly complex nature of the problems confronting Shane and his English adversaries, and the genuine nature of the attempts of both sides to find a permanent solution on mutually acceptable terms, but also the combination of surface contingencies and deeper ideological forces that doomed their efforts to failure.
Trade Review'In this second revised edition the meticulous Prof. Ciaran Brady, basing himself on detailed research in the primary sources for a clear view of opinion among the Irish, proposes a more benign assessment of Shane ... Like the other studies in this series, which is aimed at senior classes in school and undergraduates readers in college, as well as the general reader of history, the book has a very useful chronology of the life and times of its subject, as well as an excellent index - not always to be taken for granted these days.' J. Anthony Gaughan, The Irish Catholic, April 2016
Table of ContentsForeword; Preface; Chronology of O'Neill's Life and Times; Chapter One: The Legend of Shane the Proud: A Myth and Its Uses; Chapter Two: The Problems of O'Neill Lordship, 1241-1541; Chapter Three: The Resistible Rise of Shane O'Neill; Chapter Four: The Lost Peace, 1556-62; Chapter Five: Appeasement and Drift, 1562-5; Chapter Six: War, 1566-7; Notes; Select Bibliography; Index.
