Biographical studies of the two Dukes of Ormonde illuminate aspects of the operation of political power in seventeenth-century Ireland, and, on a wider European stage, the predicaments facing the nobility. A valuable insight into the political and material world of Ireland's leading aristocratic family. HISTORY For much of their lives the two dukes of Ormonde dominated public events in Ireland, where they served the English sovereign as viceroy five times; they were also powerful presences in the Stuart court in England, and commanded armies both in Ireland and Europe. Later, they spent long periods on the continent as travellers and exiles. Yetdespite their importance in the public life of the age, neither duke has been the subject of a full modern biography, a gap which this collection of essays aims to fill, using key episodes and phases in the Ormondes' careers to investigate the larger picture. The dukes' lives as great nobles, landowners and converts to Protestantism raise problems specific to Ireland, but they also exemplify the predicament of nobles elsewhere in Europe. A particular focusis on the worlds that they and their wives created, often innovative and always dazzling, and on the clienteles who looked to them for preferment and on which a part of the Ormondes' political weight rested. Throughout, much newlight is cast on such vexed questions as the troubled and constantly changing relationship between Ireland and England, between public and private interests, and the roles of women. Dr TOBY BARNARD teaches at the University of Oxford. Contributors: G.E. AYLMER, T.C. BARNARD, EVELINE CRUICKSHANKS, DAVID EDWARDS, JANE FENLON, RAYMOND GILLESPIE, DAVID HAYTON, PATRICK LITTLE, RENE MOULINAS, EAMONN - CIARDHA, NATHALIE GENET ROUFFIAC

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.