This chapter opens Ireland and the Renaissance court, an interdisciplinary collection of chapters exploring Irish and English courts, courtiers and politics in the early modern period, c.1450–1640. It gives an overview of changes to court culture in the late medieval and early modern periods and argues for the European character of Irish courts and aristocratic practice. It briefly describes the chapters, which are written by both established and emergent scholars working in the fields of history, literary studies and philology. Topics explored include Gaelic cúirteanna, the indigenous centres of aristocratic life throughout the medieval period; on the regnal court of the emergent British Empire based in London at Whitehall; and on Irish participation in the wider world of European elite life and letters. Collectively, they expand the chronological limits of ‘early modern’ Ireland to include the fifteenth century and recreate its multilingual character through exploration of its English, Irish and Latin archives. In sum, this chapter argues for moving beyond binary approaches to English-Irish history and identifying points of contact as well as contention.
This volume sheds fresh light on Irish courts and court culture in the age of the European Renaissance. It contains chapters written by historians and literary scholars working with English, Irish and Latin sources. It is divided into three thematic and roughly chronological sections. The first, ‘Indigenous court society in Ireland’, considers the European aspects of Gaelic and Gaelicised aristocratic courts prior to the revolutionary religious and political changes instituted by Henry VIII. Looking back as far as the mid-fifteenth century, it demonstrates how Irish elite society was developing in ways similar to those found in England and on the Continent. Part II, ‘Made in Whitehall: Irish policy and a regnal court’, argues that London, rather than viceregal Dublin, must be seen as the centre for policy-making in the new kingdom of Ireland. How that policy was created, debated and implemented – or not – is surveyed from both English and Irish viewpoints. The third and concluding section, ‘Positioning Ireland in the Renaissance court world’, sets Irish elite culture within the broader dynamics of the late Renaissance. Its chapters reveal some of the ways in which Irish people, both at home and abroad, participated in an emergent, multilingual republic of letters and transnational intellectual community. Ireland and the Renaissance court is an essential guide to the European aspects of Irish high politics and society and, conversely, the Irish and Gaelic elements of the Renaissance world.
Malcolm Smuts draws comparisons between viceregal courts in Ireland and Continental Europe. With the Act for the Kingly Title (1541), the viceregal court in Dublin took on a new importance and shared many similarities with other such courts spread about the expanding land-based empires of the continent. A crucial distinction, however, was the presence of military men in the Irish iteration of this pan-European phenomenon, necessitated by the functional rather than ceremonial requirements of the court. The aggrandisement of this subaltern court by means of its (vice)regal progresses, functional though it may have been in origin, served in the end to hinder good governance of the local population and soured relations with London’s courtiers envious of an ‘overmighty’ governor promoted from their own ranks.
Not all records of the Irish court were produced in Irish or English. This chapter opens a window onto Latin learning in Ireland at a time when English commentators were denigrating the barbarousness of Irish society. Specifically, it reveals Ireland as a previously unrecognised node in the growing republic of letters linking the great and the learned through a culture of letter writing based on humanist precepts and fashions. Schools in Ireland trained students in the new Latinity; aristocrats hired secretaries skilled in in the latest linguistic styles. This chapter, then, is attentive to both the intellectual and the sociological aspects of the new learning, and to the political pressures of English state centralisation that threatened those developments.
The first Earl of Essex’s ‘Enterprise’ proved unsuccessful. Hiram Morgan’s chapter covers the full chronology of this colonial fiasco, from the planning stages to its ignominious failure in practice. Court machinations were always central to Essex’s plan: it was hatched by him as a means to aggrandise himself in the eyes of his queen and above his peers, and the revival of the medieval earldom of Ulster was a critical component of that court competition. But such ‘paper-based’ ventures conceived as much to affect the relative status of English elites as to effect ‘civility’ in the western realm proved terminal to some of the figures involved and toxic to any emergent affinities binding Irish lords to the central state.
This chapter opens with a chronologically sweeping overview of relations between modernising courts in both Scotland and Gaelic Ireland. Too frequently the lordships of Gaelic Ulster are viewed as the most remote and retrograde in Ireland over the late medieval and early modern periods, only brought into the glaring light of an anglicising cultural imperialism at the point of military defeat in 1603. Simon Egan paints a radically different picture whereby the developments of courts overseen by the Stuarts and those under the sway of the O’Donnells were interlinked and had a distorting effect on English high political considerations. Critically, the author draws attention to the influence of European ecclesiastical matters on Scottish and Irish political calculations and practice.
This chapter returns to looking at Walcott’s Test career with the West Indies, which continued during the 1950s in tandem with his work in British Guiana/Guyana. There is consideration of his triumphant home series against Australia in 1955, by which time he was widely considered the best batsman in the world, but also coverage of the tensions within the West Indies side due to the continuing refusal of the authorities to appoint either Walcott or Worrell as the side’s first permanent black captain. This internal strife continues into the 1957 tour to England, where Walcott is a disaffected vice-captain and suffers poor form due to injury. Overlooked for the captaincy of the side for the 1958 home series against Pakistan, he decides to retire from Test cricket and, after a brief comeback, plays his last game for the West Indies aged 34. The chapter concludes with discussion of what kind of captain Walcott might have made if he had had the chance, and comparisons are made with the style of Worrell, who was eventually handed the job.
This chapter begins with an assessment of the importance of Walcott’s cricketing career, before moving on to look at his post-retirement move back to Barbados and a subsequent business career in personnel management. It also records his first forays into cricket administration with the West Indies, including as tour manager of the 1969 series in England and as a selector during the 1973 series against Australia, with mention of various intrigues, consideration of his management style and his relationships with players and captains. Later there is coverage of his success as manager of the West Indies as they win the 1975 and 1979 World Cup finals, and his involvement in trying to deal with the fallout of World Series cricket and of a rebel West Indies tour to South Africa. Consideration is also given to Walcott’s implacable opposition to apartheid and his role in making sure that South Africa remained excluded from world cricket, a stance that helped him towards becoming leader of cricket’s global governing body, the ICC.