Archbishop
Educated at Methodist College, Belfast, Queen's University Belfast, and Trinity College Dublin, Eames served as a curate in Bangor, County Down, and then as rector in Belfast before becoming bishop of Derry and Raphoe in the Church of Ireland in 1975 and then bishop of Down and Connor in 1980. In 1986 he became archbishop of Armagh, and was created a life peer in 1995. A celebrated advocate of peace and understanding, he advised the irish government about Protestant concerns prior to the issuance of statements regarding Northern Ireland. He plays a significant role within the general Anglican Communion. He is the recipient of honorary degrees from both of his alma maters as well as the Universities of Lancaster and Cambridge. In 2003 he was appointed chairman of the Lambeth Commission on Communion to examine challenges to Anglican unity arising from the ordination of homosexual bishops in the united states, which issued a report in October 2004 that called for avoidance of actions that inhibit unity.
Earls, Flight of the
Hugh O'Neill, the earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donnell, the earl of Tyrconnell, fled Ireland with a group of their followers from Rath-mullen, County Donegal, on September 4, 1607. They had been defeated in the extended war between 1594 and 1603 and had arrived at a peace settlement with Lord Mountjoy under which they were permitted to keep their positions, but under English law with their titles derived from the king rather than based on the Gaelic system of succession. Historians still debate whether their flight was prompted by apprehension that their position in their territories was liable to be further weakened by the New English authorities or whether they were already plotting with potential continental allies and their plans had become known to the authorities. At any rate their departure, which turned out to be permanent, enabled the English to commence the plantation of Ulster, that is, the settlement of the lands that they were interpreted to have abandoned.
Easter Rising
The rising took place in Dublin between April 24 and May 1, 1916. It was planned by the military council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), which held sway over the Irish Volun teers. Originally planned for Easter Sunday, it was delayed when Eoin MacNeill, the head of the Irish Volunteers, called off the orders for the Volunteers to mobilize throughout the nation. He did so when he discovered that a rising had been called to contest the policy that military action should be taken only for defensive purposes and that an expected arrival in Kerry of German weapons and volunteers from among irish prisoners of war in Germany, arranged by Roger Casement, had fallen through. The IRB leaders then went ahead with an operation generally limited to Dublin on Easter Monday as about 1,000 volunteers and 200 members of James Connolly's Irish Citizen Army seized a number of public positions within Dublin and made the
General Post Office on Sackville (now O'Connell) Street their headquarters. Padraic Pearse read a proclamation announcing the establishment of a provisional government of the irish Republic. Other places in the city where they established positions included the Four Courts, Jacob's Biscuit Factory, St. Stephen's Green, and the Royal College of Surgeons. Over the next four days, the British forces, reinforced with 2,500 men from the Curragh, began attacking the various rebel positions. By Saturday most had been overtaken, at a cost of 500 dead and 2,500 wounded (many civilians caught in crossfire), and millions in damage. Pearse at the General Post Office agreed to surrender unconditionally.
Toward the end of the week, General Sir John Maxwell arrived to take command of the situation. Martial law was proclaimed and martial courts began trials of leaders of the rising, of whom fifteen were executed between May 3 and May 12, included Pearse, Connolly, and Thomas Clarke. Ninety-seven others were sentenced to death, but outrage on the part of a public that had opposed the rising as well as pleas from churchmen and irish parliamentary party leaders prompted a halt to the executions. But the executions served as a trigger, which achieved the objective of the rebels, most of whom, in knowing that their military plan was futile, believed their blood sacrifice would waken
Irish prisoners being marched along a Dublin quay under British guard, during the Irish insurrection that began on Easter Monday, 1916 (Library of Congress)
Irish public outrage and engender general sympathy with their objectives. The 97, along with more than 120 others, were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment and nearly 2,000 other suspected rebels were interned in camps in Britain. The latter were released before the year was out and all were released by July 1917.
Economic War
Soon after forming his government in 1932, Eamon de Valera announced the suspension of payment of land annuity sums to the British government. The monies were payments made in return for government financing of land purchase by tenants from landlords under the various Land Purchase acts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The British retaliated by imposing tariffs on cattle and agricultural imports from Ireland. The Irish government in turn imposed tariffs on such British goods as coal, cement, machinery, and electrical goods entering Ireland. Obviously, the war was more damaging to Ireland, 96 percent of whose exports went to Britain, but it did coincide with de Valera's policy to make Ireland economically self-sufficient. The Irish cattle trade was devastated, as many outraged farmers were drawn to the appeal of the anti-de Valera Blueshirt movement, but there was some increment in tillage, especially of grains, and a boost in employment in protected and subsidized industries, such as cement and sugar beet cultivation. A gradual softening of attitudes began following a 1935 pact dealing with cattle and coal and ending with a 1938 agreement between de Valera and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, which terminated the tariffs in return for a final lump-sum payment of 10 million pounds in lieu of the annuities.
Edgeworth, Henry Essex (1745-1807)
A cousin of Maria Edgeworth, Henry Edgeworth's father had converted to Catholicism and he was educated by the Jesuits and at the Sor-bonne. He became a priest and served the poor of Paris and later the English and Irish in the city.
He took the surname "de Firmont" because of the difficulty the French had in pronouncing Edgeworth. He became spiritual director to the sister of King Louis XVI in 1791 and was the confessor for the king prior to his death as the guillotine in 1793. Edgeworth escaped to England, but declined positions in Ireland, becoming instead chaplain to the exiled king Louis XVIII in Saxony. when the exiled court went to Russia he accompanied it. He died there from fever contracted while ministering to French prisoners of war.
Edgeworth, Maria (1767-1849)
Writer
One of 22 children of Richard Lovell Edge worth, Maria Edgeworth helped raise her siblings as well as acting as agent for the estate her father brought his family to in Edgeworthstown, County Longford. She also wrote various works ranging from educational books and children's tales to novels, which earned her an international reputation. CastleRackrent (1800) and others with an Irish setting such as The Absentee (1812) and Ormond (1817) deal with much of then contemporary Irish society, especially relations between the Protestant Ascendancy and the general population, and landlords and the peasantry. Her work drew the admiration of Sir Walter Scott, with whom she exchanged visits. She also wrote novels, including Belinda (1806), with an English setting. She used her own resources and raised assistance from abroad to provide relief for victims of the Great FAMINE in the last years of her life.
Edgeworth, Richard Lovell (1744-1817)
Landlord, inventor
Born in Bath, England, and educated at oxford and Trinity College Dublin, Richard Edgeworth settled in his vast estate at Edgeworthstown, County Longford, in 1782. Married four times and the father of 22 children, including the writer, Maria Edgeworth, he was a landlord who undertook measures for reclaiming bogs and improving roads and sought to alleviate conditions for his tenantry. He also invented a pedalless bicycle, a pedometer, and a system of telegraphy between Galway and Dublin, and wrote about education in collaboration with his daughter. A member of the Irish parliament for Johnstown, County Longford, he supported Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform. He opposed the Act of Union.
Electricity Supply Board
Legislation passed by the Irish Free State established the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) as a public corporation for providing electricity through a national network of generating stations. The first such was the Shannon Scheme at Ardnacrusha, county clare, while other rivers were utilized in later decades. Many peat-fired generators were also employed in connection with Bord Na Mona. Naturally oil, gas, and coal are the other major sources of power for contemporary stations. Priority was given to industry, then to urban areas, and finally by the mid-1970s virtually all of rural ireland was electrified.
Emergency, the
The period of the Second World War from September 1939 through May 1945 when Ireland (or Eire, as then designated) maintained its neutrality despite pressures from Britain and later the United States to enter the war against the Axis and to a lesser degree from the Germans to side with them. Eamon de Valera, as Taoiseach and as minister for external affairs, remained committed to neutrality, a position objected to by few in Ireland. Strict censorship was imposed on the irish media to inhibit public sympathy being drawn to either side in the war. Strict rationing was also required because few goods were available for import from Britain due to war-induced demands and restricted availability of shipping. The government employed Emergency Powers legislation to intern hundreds of IRA members, as well as imprison hundreds more, and even execute six, because the IRA's declaration of war on Britain and readiness to collaborate with Germany could have jeopardized Ireland's neutrality.
Emergency Powers legislation
From the beginning of the Irish state, as well as Northern Ireland, legislation has been enacted empowering the state to employ extraordinary powers to deal with internal challenges to its authority. The instruments the authorities have employed have included military tribunals, internment, juryless trials, and various deviations from standard common law procedural rules. Northern Ireland employed a series of Special Powers Acts, which later became permanent, evoked by the minister for home affairs in emergencies, which over a period of time gained a reputation for being employed in a sectarian manner. The Irish Free State passed during the civil war an Emergency Resolution giving extraordinary powers to military tribunals. After the civil war, various temporary public safety measures were passed to deal with the continued existence of IRA and Sinn Fbin movements that had not accepted the legitimacy of the state. Similar legislation was passed after the assassination in 1927 of Kevin O'Higgins, minister for justice, and again in the early 1930s. Eamon de Valera, although having campaigned against such measures while in opposition and having released interned IRA members upon coming to power, invoked the same type measures against the challenge posed by the Blueshirts in 1933 and 1934. But he also used it against the IRA a few years later following the killing of a landlord and of a retired British naval officer. With the outset of the Second World War, an Emergency Powers Act was passed giving powers of internment to the minister for justice, in addition to existing Treason and offences against the State acts. In 1976, following the assassination of Christopher Ewart-Biggs, the British ambassador, another Emergency Powers Act was passed to facilitate the implementation of the existing Offences against the State Act.
Similarly in Northern Ireland, after the suspension of its parliament and the imposition of DIRECT RULE, the old Special Powers Legislation was replaced by a Prevention of Terrorism Act and by the employment of juryless courts, with restrictions on standard procedural and evidence rules, to combat the activities of the IRA and of assorted loyalist groups.
Ter, he was a useful defender of the UNITED IRISH MEN, with whom he was associated. He was among a number of leaders in the group arrested in March 1798 who, after confessing, were given the option of exile. Emmet was first interned in Inverness Shire and then moved to Amsterdam in 1802 and New York in 1804, where he became politically prominent.
Emmet, Robert (1778-1803)
Revolutionary
Robert Emmet was the younger brother of Thomas Addis EMMET. He was born in Dublin of a Protestant family of Kerry and Tipperary origins. He was forced to withdraw from TRINITY COLLEGE in 1798 because of his UNITED IRISHMEN involvement. After the failure of the 1798 uprising he went to the Continent, making contact with exiled Irish activists and with Napoleon. Returning to Ireland, Emmet began to organize for another rising that might coincide with an expected resumption of war between France and Britain. An explosion in an arms depot necessitated that he act prematurely, calling the rebellion into action on July 23, 1803. There was inadequate coordination with expected allies, including Michael DWYER in Wicklow, and, as a result, only about 100 took part in a futile effort to storm Dublin Castle. On the way, the group murdered the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Kilwar-den. Emmet escaped, but was apprehended a month later, tried, and executed on September 20. He became an icon in Irish nationalist mar-tyrology because of his romance with Sarah Philpot Curran and his speech from the dock in which he asked no man "to write his epitaph" until "my country takes her place among the nations of the earth."
Emmet, Thomas Addis (1764-1827)
Revolutionary, barrister
Born in Cork, Thomas Emmet was the elder brother of Robert EMMET, and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and law at the Inns of the Court, London. A prominent barris-
Encumbered Estates Act
Legislation passed by parliament in 1849 during the Great Famine, which sought to facilitate the change of ownership of Irish land with the expectation that an inefficient landlord class could be replaced by an improving ownership comparable to that of England. The legislation enabled land straddled with debts and other "encumbrances," such as wills that restricted transfer of land other than to eldest sons, nonetheless to be sold. The act resulted in the sale of almost a quarter of the land in the country, but most of the purchasers were Irishmen and many were speculators rather than improvers.
Enniskillen bombing
Eleven people, all of whom were civilians, were killed by an IRA bomb at the Remembrance Day Ceremony on November 8, 1987, at the cenotaph in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. It was a major terrorist deed that proved counterproductive for the IRA.
Essex, Robert Devereux, second earl of (1566-1601)
A favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, as had been his father who had campaigned to colonize east Ulster in the 1570s, where he was responsible for the massacre of the population of Rathlin Island. The earl of Essex had failed to achieve success in actions against Spain, which greatly disappointed the queen. Accordingly, he sought to regain her confidence by accepting the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland in 1599 and undertaking a war against the Irish forces led by Hugh
O'Neill. Despite an enormous force, his efforts failed and he negotiated a truce with O'Neill and then returned of his own volition to England to explain his position. The queen was unconvinced and he was arrested. In 1601 he was beheaded.
Eucharistic Congress
Ireland was host to the 31st Eucharistic Congress, an international assembly of Catholics designed to promote understanding of and devotion to the Eucharist, that is, the presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine, in June 1932. The event was timed to coincide with celebration of the approximate 1,500th anniversary of St. Patrick's mission to Ireland. It also provided an occasion to manifest the linkage of nationalism and religion with the implication that Catholicism, the religion of the vast majority of the Irish people, was again the de facto religion of Ireland now that the country had achieved political independence. The highlight of the congress occurred with attendance by a million people at a Mass in Phoenix Park at which John McCormick sang "Panis Angelicus." The presence of over 100 bishops, nine cardinals, and thousands of overseas pilgrims made it one of the first occasions on which the recently formed first Fianna Fail government could assert its international legitimacy.
European Union
The organization of European states that began with the six-member Common Market created in March 1957. Ireland unsuccessfully applied for membership in 1961, but was turned down along with Great Britain because of Charles de Gaulle's apprehension that the expansion would serve as a wedge for American domination of Europe. After de Gaulle resigned the French presidency in 1970, both countries quickly reapplied and were accepted. A plebiscite was held in Ireland in 1972 in which more than 80 percent of the voters approved joining. Formal entrance took place in January 1973. Since then the organization has expanded in membership as well as changed in character, developing from an exclusively economic partnership to a political entity as reflected in the name change from Common Market to European Community to European Union. The European Parliament was formed with, within a few years, membership directly elected from the voters of the member states. Increasingly, member states have been required to conform to European Union standards on a variety of issues ranging from human rights to economic rules to environmental standards. The Irish electorate has accepted by referenda in 1987 and again in 1992 European legislation and agreements to finalize creation of a single European market and a common European currency that, in January 2001, replaced the former national currencies of most members. Membership has brought substantial benefits to the Irish economy, as Ireland, which on joining had been the poorest member, has been a net beneficiary when grants received are matched against Irish contributions. That factor has played a major part in the phenomenal economic growth of the country in the latter part of the 20th century, so much so that Ireland is expected in the future to be a net contributor rather than beneficiary, especially with the expansion in membership and the inclusion of less developed nations. Union insistence on conformity to certain standards has also affected Ireland socially, most decidedly in the area of women's right, as the Irish government was forced in the 1970s to abandon its practice of dismissing female civil servants upon marriage. In 2001, the Irish electorate at first rejected the Treaty of Nice that would have allowed further expansion of the union, but a year later accepted the same after a formal declaration acknowledging Irish neutrality in exempting the country from military policy of the union. On May 1, 2004, the union grew to 25 members with the admission of former satellites of the Soviet Union, including Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, as well as Slovenia, formerly part of Yugoslavia, the Greek portion of Cyprus, and Malta. A major current concern is the rejection by some European electorates of ratification of a fundamental constitution that had been drafted for the European Union.
Annual memorial prize in his honor awarded to recipients judged to have contributed to improved Anglo-Irish relations.
Ewart-Biggs, Christopher (1922-1976)
Diplomat
British ambassador to Ireland, Ewart-Biggs had been a soldier in the Second World War and lost his right eye in the Battle of El Alamein in 1942. He served as British consul in Algiers in 1961, where hard-line French colons, who opposed concessions to Algerian nationalism, made him an object for assassination. In 1976 the Provisional IRA detonated a land mine destroying his car as he was driven from his residence in County Wicklow to the British embassy in Dublin. His death prompted the passage of Emergency Pow ers LEGISLATION and the establishment of an
External Relations Act
Legislation introduced by Eamon de Valera on the occasion of the abdication of King Edward VIII, it allowed the king to act on the advice of the Irish Executive Council in naming consuls and signing treaties so long as Ireland was associated with the Commonwealth of Nations of which he was the symbol. At the same time, de Valera introduced legislation for a new constitution for Ireland, which eliminated all reference to the Crown. It was his way of achieving the proposals of his famous Document No. 2, put forward during the debate on the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.
World History
