On the occasion of the exhibition, the transcribed and digitised 1641 Depositions, witness testimonies of the violent massacres of the 1641 Irish Rebellion, was also launched online in a new website www.1641.tcd.ie, a free resource which will be publicly available. The online resource sees the culmination of a three-year collaborative research project between TCD and the Universities of Aberdeen and Cambridge, using the latest research technology.
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Commenting on the significance of the historic occasion of the exhibition and the online publication of the 1641 Depositions, the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese said: “The events of 1641 have been the subject of considerable dispute and controversy, with wildly divergent accounts in both the Catholic and Protestant historical narratives. Facts and truth have been casualties along the way and the distillation of skewed perceptions over generations have contributed to a situation where both sides were confounding mysteries to one another. That is why in these more chastened and reflective times, as we try to understand more deeply and generously the perspectives which have estranged us and as we try to reconcile, to be good neighbours, friends and partners across those sectarian divides, it is such a valuable thing to have access to this unique collection of witness testimonies from some of those who experienced the terror and horror of those tragic times.”
The 1641 Depositions are witness testimonies by mainly Protestants, but also by some Catholics, from all social backgrounds concerning their experiences during the rebellion of the Catholic Irish in 1641. The testimonies document sometimes in vivid and harrowing terms the alleged crimes committed by the Irish Catholic insurgents, including torture, assault, stripping, imprisonment and murder as well as the loss of goods and military activity. This body of material that runs to 19,000 pages, contained in 31 volumes of linen rag paper and bound in buckram relates to almost every county in Ireland. There are approximately 8,000 depositions in which 90,000 people are named. It is unparalleled anywhere in early modern Europe, providing a unique source of information for the causes and events surrounding the 1641 rebellion and for the social, economic, religious, and political history of seventeenth-century Ireland, England and Scotland.
Now for the first time some of the most significant 1641 Depositions will be on public display along with a rich collection of manuscript material, maps, contemporary pamphlets and printed works that document the sectarian tensions in colonial Ireland that erupted in 1641, the course of the rebellion, and the fallout that shaped the course of Irish political and social history over the following centuries.
One of the best known depositions is by Eleanor Price*, a widow and mother of six from County Armagh, who was imprisoned by Irish insurgents after the rebellion broke out and whose five children were drowned in the River Bann at Portadown bridge in one of the worst atrocities committed in Ireland during these years. Iconic images of the drowning of Portadown bridge still adorn Orange Order banners.
The online publication of the 1641 Depositions for all of the four provences Ulster, Connacht, Leinster and Connacht was funded by the Irish Research Council of the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS), Trinity College Dublin and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK, as part of a major inter-institutional research project between Trinity College Dublin, the University of Aberdeen and the University of Cambridge which conserved, transcribed and digitised the depositions for their online publication.
With the aid of leading edge technology* the depositions which are difficult to read, and in some cases virtually illegible with inconsistent spelling, grammar and punctuation and a wide variety of handwriting were painstakingly transcribed by researchers and digitised for all to read and study, academics and the general public alike. Researchers from Trinity’s School of Computer Science and Statistics and IBM LanguageWare made a significant contribution to the project and a TCD campus company, Eneclann digitised the manuscripts and developed the website.
The publication makes this hugely important body of material publicly available at www.1641.tcd.ie allowing searches of all depositions by name and place name. Family ancestors’ depositions may be searched or notable depositions such as that of Eleanor Price with harrowing extracts as follows:
“The said Captain and Rebels then and there forced & threw all those prisoners (and amongst the rest of the deponents five children by name Adam John Ann Mary and Joan Price off the bridge into the water and then and there instantly & most barbarously drowned the most of them: And those that could swim and come to the shore they either knocked them in the hands & so after drowned them, or else shot them to death in the water. [sic].”
Commenting on the significance of the research, TCD’s Erasmus Smith Professor of Modern History, Jane Ohlmeyer and one of the lead academics of the research programme said:
“A team of roughly 50 scholars, librarians and technologists have been working hard on this project for the past three years. We are simply delighted that this first phase of the 1641 Depositions Project has been completed on time, within budget and over specification. We hope that academics across the globe will use the 1641 Depositions and that citizen scholars in Ireland and the UK will turn to the depositions as they search for their ancestors and reconstruct the histories of their local communities. Having completed the first phase of the project we now turn to using the depositions as a research and educational resource. Further grants from the AHRC and the EU, FP7 programme are allowing for sophisticated linguistic analysis of the depositions and, in partnership with IBM, for cutting edge technological work.”
An international seminar on the 1641 Depositions took place on the day of the exhibition opening which also was the 369th anniversary of the 1641 Rebellion. An overview of the 1641 Research Project was presented (Professor Jane Ohlmeyer) together with papers that situated the 1641 Rebellion in its wider English (Professor John Morrill, University of Cambridge) and global contexts ( Professor Ben Kiernan, University of Yale).
For media queries contact TCD Press Officer, TCD Press Officer, Caoimhe Ní Lochlainn,
tel: + 353-1- 8962310\(0)87-9958014/ email: [email protected]
Professor Jane Ohlmeyer is available for interview on request.
Notes to Editor:
* The exhibition ‘Ireland in Turmoil: The 1641 Depositions’ runs until April 3rd 2011 in the Long Room, Old Library, Trinity College Dublin .
*About the 1641 Research Project:
The 1641 Depositions Project , a three-year project (2007-2010) conserved, digitised, transcribed and made the depositions available online. Depositions for Ireland’s four provences are now published online at www.1641.TCD.ie . The Irish Manuscripts Commission will also publish a hard copy of the 1641 Depositions in twelve volumes.
The 1641 Depositions Project is a collaborative project between Trinity College, Dublin, the University of Aberdeen and the University of Cambridge working in partnership with IBM LanguageWare. A TCD campus company, Eneclann, was commissioned to digitise the manuscripts.
The principal investigators on the project are: Professor Jane Ohlmeyer and Dr Micheál Ó Siochrú (Trinity College Dublin), Professor Thomas Bartlett (Aberdeen University) and Professor John Morrill (Cambridge University).The transcriptions are edited by Professor Aidan Clarke. The researchers on the project are Dr Edda Frankot, Dr Annaleigh Margey and Dr Elaine Murphy.
The College Librarian, Robin Adams, the Keeper of Manuscripts, Dr Bernard Meehan, and his colleagues, especially Jane Maxwell were an integral part of this project, as was Dr Susie Bioletti, head of conservation.
Dr Brian Donovan from Eneclann provided technical advice and support from the inception of the project in 2005. Professor Vinnie Wade and Dr Séamus Lawless from the Intelligent Systems Laboratory in the School of Computer Science and Statistics and Dr Tim Keefe, provided technological advice, as did members of the Digital Humanities Observatory, especially Dr Susan Schreibman and Dot Porter. Marie Wallace and D.J. McCloskey, IBM LanguageWare, provided the project with software and allowed us to avail of their expertise.
The project received over €1 million from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, the Arts & Humanities Research Council in the UK and the Library of Trinity College Dublin. More recently the project has secured additional funding from the Arts & Humanities Research Council in the UK (c.€500k) and from the FP7 programme as part of an international collaborative bid. In this new 3-year project, called CULTURA, a range of technologies developed by IBM (Dublin & Haifa) are used to develop tools that aim to transform how cultural artefacts, like the 1641 Depositions, are experienced and how communities (from the general public to the scholar/researcher) contribute towards this process. Industrial partners include IMB and a Bulgarin SME, along with mathematicians from the Sofia university and academics from the universities of Padua and Gratz.
The curators of the exhibition in Trinity’s Long Room, ‘Ireland in Turmoil: The 1641 Depositions’ were Felicity O’Mahony, Bernard Meehan, Eamon Darcy, Micheál Ó Siochrú, and Jane Ohlmeyer.
Opening hours of exhibition: Monday to Saturday 9.30am- 5pm & Sundays 12 noon – 4.30pm. Admission to the exhibition also includes viewing the Book of Kells exhibition. Admission €9.00, Students/Senior Citizens €8.00. Secondary school groups when accompanied by their teachers have free admission for the duration of the exhibition. Check www.bookofkells.ie for details or tel: 01 896 2320.
About the 1641 Depositions
Why are the Depositions Important?
The Depositions relating to Ulster where the rebellion first began, are of particular importance and form a key element of our historical heritage. They constitute the chief evidence for the sharply contested allegation that the rebellion began with a general massacre of Protestant settlers. As a result, this material has been central to the most protracted and bitter of Irish historical controversies. In Ireland, both North and South, that controversy has never been satisfactorily resolved and successive generations have invented and re-invented the past in response to contemporary developments. Propagandists, politicians and historians have all exploited the Depositions at different times. The 1641 ‘massacres’, like King William’s victory at the Boyne (1690) and the Battle of the Somme (1916) have played a key role in creating and sustaining a collective Protestant/ British identity in Ulster.
Where are the original Depositions?
In 1741 the 1641 Depositions were gifted by Bishop John Sterne to the Library of Trinity College Dublin. In all about 5,000 depositions or witness statements, examinations and associated materials, amounting to 19,010 pages and bound in 31 volumes, are extant in the Manuscripts and Archives Research Library of Trinity College Dublin. They are difficult to read (some are virtually illegible), the spelling is inconsistent and erratic, as is the use of grammar and punctuation and there is a wide variety of handwriting. Eleven volumes contain depositions relating to Leinster, ten to Munster (seven of these cover County Cork), two to Connacht and eight to Ulster.
Examples of well known depositions:
Deposition of Elizabeth Price [Extract]
MS 836, fol. 101r
The took and seized on her this deponent, and five of her Children: & above threescore more Protestants at that time in the Church of Armagh and having stripped them all of their clothes cast tham all into Prison: About a fortnight after the Rebels (especially the said Sir Phelim) proposed & offered to send some of them into England & to given them safe conduct and free passes for that purpose: which offer being embraced, then the Rebels
fol. 101v
declared that they would suffer the Children & those that they knew had no means left, to go: But as for those that they conceived had hid or concealed anything from them those they stayed, & in particular they stayed their in prison with the said Sir Phelim, the Lady Crawfield & her Children to the Lord Cawfield, whom after they were murdered, Mrs Taylor & her son (whom they after hanged to death) & her this deponent Mr Robert Ditham, whom they after murdered and mangled to pieces and his wife Peirce Newberry whim they also afterwards murdered Tho: Newberry & Henry Newberry one Richard Stubbs, Richard Warren whom they hacked all to pieces and divers other: But as to this deponents five children and about 40 more young & poor prisoners those were sent away with passes from the said Sir Phelim together with about threescore & fifteen more protestants from other places within the parishes of Armagh & Loughgall: who were all promised to be safely convoyed & sent out to their friends in England: Their Commander or Conductor for that purpose appointed being as he quickly after proved to be a most bloody & cursed Rebel by name Captain Manus O’Cane & his souldiers: which said Captain Manus O’Cane & his souldiers haveing brought or rather driven like sheep or beasts to a Market, those poor prisoners being about one hundred and fifteen to the bridge of Portadown: The said Captain and Rebels then and there forced & threw all those prisoners (and amongst the rest of the deponents five children by name Adam John Ann Mary and Joan Price off the bridge into the water and then and there instantly & most barbarously drowned the most of them: And those that could swim and come to the shore they either knocked them in the hands & so after drowned them, or else shot them to death in the water. And one of them that was a Scotish minister swimming below the bridge to or near the lands of one Mr. Black, the Rebels pursued so far
fol. 102r
far That they then and there shot him to death And as for this deponent and many others that were stayed behind divers tortures were used unto them to make them to confess their hidden moneys & means, & many murdered (after they had Confessed all their means left) And the deponent and the rest often afrighted with a block and a hatchet: which (to putt them in more fear) was always left with them as the engines of their death: and the deponent for her own part was thrice hanged vp to confess monies and after let down, & had the soles of her feet fryed and burned at the fire, & was often scourged & whipped & she & the most of the rest of the prisoners so pined & hunger starved that some of them died and laid a week unburied & this deponent and others that survived were forced to eat grass & weeds & when they wanted liberty to go out & gather their extreme hunger forced them to burst open the window in their prison chamber & there to scrape & rake up weeds moss or anything that they could possibly eat from the walls: And in that or the like or worse distress they Continued and were tossed & halled from place to place in most miserable manner for 14 or 15 months together, their allowance of viands being only a quarter or oatmeal amongst six for 3 days & not half water enough Inasmuch as at lengtht they had as she is verily persuaded been forced to have fed and eaten of such of them as had after died: Had not the great God almighty put some end to those great calamitous miseries by the landing of Owen Roe O’Neill out of Spain or from some other part beyond the sea: who being arrived there, & Informed of their miserable torments & sufferings, and what multitudes of protestants the said Sir Phelim & his Confederates had murdered & put to death by the sword, hanging, drowning, famishing Burning & other cruel and barbarous deaths. Did not only enlarge
fol. 102v
and set a Liberty her this deponent and those other prisoners that suvived & were there with her And sent them all with a safe Conoy to or near Dundalk. But upon the sight of this deponent and others prisoners miserale almost starved and in this deponents presence & hearing exceedingly reproved the said Sir Phelim O’Neill And his other partakers for their odious and Merciless cruelties: In as much as hee plainly tould them in this deponents hearing: that they ought to suffer & endure the like torments & deaths that had forced & put upon the protestants
Portadown, Armagh
Deposition of William Clarke [Extract]
MS 836, fol. 2r
‘William Clarke … Tanner, a British protestant sworn and examined deposed that … he was by the rebels imprisoned for nine days with at least one hundred men, women and children. During this time, many of his fellow prisoners were tortured by the rebels who strangled them aong many other cruelties. After his imprisonment, Clarke with about 100 other men women and children were driven like hogs about six miles to a river called the Bann in which space of six miles these Christians were barbarously abused by the rebels. They forced them and pricked them with swords and pikes in their sides. They murdered three on the way to the river, namely William Fullerton, minister of Levileglish, and one Master Abree and Richard Gladwish. They drove the rest down to the river and then forced them to go up on to the bridge. This was then cut down and the rebels then stripped the said prisoners naked and with their pikes and swords and other weapons thrust them down headlong into the river and there they immediately perished and those who tried to save their lives by swimming to the shore the rebels shot them. ‘
Belturbet, Cavan
Deposition of Ambrose Bedell [Extract]
fol. 105v
The deponent [Ambrose Bedell] was credibly told by some of the rebels that the river of Belturbet (where the rebels had drowned several protestants) was formerly replenished with much fish, which after the drowning of those protestants went away, so that none could be seen in the river within half a mile of the drowning place, where plenty were caught before. The rebels said this was the judgment of God, because of the drowning of those people.
Silvermines, Tipperary
Deposition of William Timmes [Extract]
MS 821, fol. 194r
being all armed some with pistols others with skeins hatchets swords & other weapons, came all together on a Sabbath day, about Candlemas 1641, suddenly & Rebelliously into the refining house of the said mines of Knockanaderrick. And then & there in severall rooms of the same, and in places near the same did assault and set upon the said English persons, and stripping some of them naked they then and there with their said weapons did most miserably and mortally slash, cut, knock in the heads & wound them that they then and there died, There being then and there such a great loud and dangerous storm of thunder, lightening, rain, wind and tempestuous weather That those in the 2nd, 3rd or other rooms of the house could not (as was credibly reported hear the cries or noise of the slain people in the first next or any other room but where themselves were: & yet the same tempest (the vehemence whereof was such as the like was not before observed) could not nor did soe deter but animate those bloody murderers to desist or forbear until they had then and there butchered and absolutely putt to death these protestants.
