Though known today largely for dating the creation of the world to 400BC, James Ussher (1581-1656) was an important scholar and ecclesiastical leader in the seventeenth century. As Professor of Theology at Trinity College Dublin, and Archbishop of Armagh from 1625, he shaped the newly protestant Church of Ireland. Tracing its roots back to St. Patrick, he gave it a sense of Irish identity and provided a theology which was strongly Calvinist and fiercely anti-Catholic. In exile in England in the 1640s he advised both king and parliament, trying to heal the ever-widening rift by devising a compromise over church government. Forced finally to choose sides by the outbreak of civil was in 1642, Ussher opted for the royalists, but found it difficult to combine his loyalty to Charles with his detestation of Catholicism.
A meticulous scholar and an extensive researcher, Ussher had a breathtaking command of languages and disciplines--"learned to a miracle" according to one of his friends. He worked on a series of problems: the early history of bishops, the origins of Christianity in Ireland and Britain, and the implications of double predestination, making advances which were to prove of lasting significance. Tracing the interconnections between this scholarship and his wider ecclesiastical and political interests, Alan Ford throws new light on the character and attitudes of a seminal figure in the history of Irish Protestantism.

Discusses the reactions of seventeenth and eighteenth-century writers of Irish history to the unprecedented turbulence of the age. Ireland and the Irish, it is often argued, have been mired for centuries in mindsets which employ the past in order to trace and justify the enmities of the present. However, as Constructing the Past: Writing Irish History 1600-1800 seeks to underscore, the truth of such interactions with the Irish past is far more complex and dynamic. Spanning two hundred years of history, this book finds a relationship with the past which is as adaptive as it is rigid, as iconoclastic as it is reactionary. Beginning with an Introduction by Roy Foster, this innovative volume incorporates a wide range of perspectives on how history in Ireland has been written and perceived from the early-modern period onward. Drawing upon both key moments - including the Cromwellian invasion, the 1688 Revolution and 1798, to name a few - as well as forgotten incidents, each article discusses the ways in which the presentationof the past in Ireland has been forged by the circumstances of its writers and context of those memories. Drawing upon contributions by both highly accomplished and up-and-coming historians of Ireland, Britain and Europe, Constructing the Past seeks to illuminate how the Irish past has been constructed, torn down and again rebuilt by the Irish and historians of Ireland alike. STEPHEN PAUL FORREST serves as the Director of Operations forthe Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation; MARK WILLIAMS is currently reading for a Doctorate in Modern European History at Hertford College, Oxford.

Ireland is riven by sectarian hatred. This simple assumption provides a powerful explanation for the bitterness and violence which has so dominated Irish history. Most notably, the troubles in Northern Ireland have provided fertile ground for scholars from all disciplines to argue about and explore ways in which religious division fueled the descent into hostility and disorder. In much of this literature, however, sectarianism is seen as, somehow, a 'given' in Irish history, an inevitable product of the clash of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, something which sprang fully-formed into existence in the sixteenth century. In this book leading historians provide the first detailed analysis of the ways in which rival confessions were developed in early modern Ireland, the extent to which the Irish people were indeed divided into two religious camps by the mid-seventeenth century, and also their surprising ability to transcend such stark divisions.

Ireland is riven by sectarian hatred. This simple assumption provides a powerful explanation for the bitterness and violence which has so dominated Irish history. Most notably, the troubles in Northern Ireland have provided fertile ground for scholars from all disciplines to argue about and explore ways in which religious division fueled the descent into hostility and disorder. In much of this literature, however, sectarianism is seen as, somehow, a 'given' in Irish history, an inevitable product of the clash of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, something which sprang fully formed into existence in the sixteenth century. In this book leading historians provide a detailed analysis of the ways in which rival confessions were developed in early modern Ireland, the extent to which the Irish people were indeed divided into two religious camps by the mid-seventeenth century, and also their surprising ability to transcend such stark divisions.