REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF 1641 DEPOSITIONS EXHIBITION: ‘IRELAND IN TURMOIL…’
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF 1641 DEPOSITIONS EXHIBITION: ‘IRELAND IN TURMOIL: THE 1641 DEPOSITIONS’
Provost, Lord Bannside, Ladies and gentlemen,
For all our economic preoccupations, I think this is a better Friday, 22 October to be alive than that other Friday, 22 October 1641 which we are recalling in this exhibition.
Ireland was then a powder keg of highly combustible political, ethnic and sectarian passions in the wake of the Elizabethan conquest, subsequent plantation and effective dispossession of large parts of Gaelic Ireland. With war in Scotland and the authority of Charles 1st under threat in England and fearful for their increasingly fragile future, the Irish and Old English made a fateful bid to wrest back political control of their country. What was intended by the instigators as a conservative coup, spun out of control and Ireland descended into a bitter politico-sectarian conflict that in the following years visited appalling human suffering, culminating in the violent reconquest effected by Oliver Cromwell and casting long, brooding shadows from which we, 350 years later, are only beginning to emerge.
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 stories recorded in the 1641 Depositions, though they come largely from the Protestant communities, include some from Catholics, from people of all social backgrounds, from the illiterate, so often completely written out of history and poignantly from a disproportionately high number of widows. They bring us deep into that dysfunctional and insane world where neighbour killed neighbour and where a ferociously harsh winter ensured that many more were to perish from the cold as they fled from the encircling violence. Let us hope that their voices and their suffering, far from driving us deeper into our sectarian bunkers, do the opposite and inspire us to keep on working to ensure an end forever to such suffering, a profound, embedded, respect for one and all and an egalitarian, just, democratic society where peace prevails.
This exhibition is aptly placed in the wonderful jewel in Trinity’s Crown, The Long Room, at a University which itself predates these events, lived through them, was part of them and indeed was a partisan player in 17th century Ireland but is now a comfortable yet challenging intellectual meeting place for the forensic examination of facts and perspectives. Although housed here in the College Library for centuries, it is only now that these documents are open to us and to the world. That is largely thanks to a formidable partnership starting with teams in Trinity College Dublin and the universities of Aberdeen and Cambridge, who have just completed a major inter-institutional research project, which has allowed the digitisation, transcription and online publication of the 1641 Depositions. They were helped by funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK, the Irish Research Council of the Humanities and Social Sciences and Trinity College Library. I congratulate the multi-disciplinary team of scholars, librarians and IT-specialists who worked together with Eneclann and IBM Languageware Dublin to produce what is a remarkable and timely resource. The three researchers who painstakingly transcribed every one of those handwritten documents deserve special mention as does Professor Aidan Clarke, the general editor and a distinguished scholar of the Old English in Ireland.
The online publication of the Depositions will allow members of the public and the academic community alike to conduct their respective searches for deponents and the Irish Manuscripts Commissions will publish the Depositions over the course of the next few years, quite a change from the 1930s when the Commission’s attempt to publish them was thwarted on the grounds that they might encourage divisiveness. The outbreak of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in 1969 made short shrift of another attempt. Third time lucky – and it is no coincidence that it occurs in the context of a peace that for all its difficulties is little by little healing history’s hurts.
As we head into a period of iconic anniversaries of events about which all sides have very different views, let us hope that we will all endeavour to see these commemorative events as opportunities to practice and perfect the mutual sensitivity and respect which is needed for neighbour to live contentedly with neighbour. If approached in an open, honest and constructive spirit, these anniversaries will allow us transform topics whose taboo status weakened all of us into sources of informed mutual comprehension and strength. We are, even after the publication of the Depositions, unlikely to agree a common version of history but we can agree that to have a common future, a shared and peaceful future, there is nothing to be gained from ransacking the past for ammunition to justify the furthering of hatred and distrust. There is however everything to be gained from interrogating the past calmly and coherently, in order to understand each other’s passions more comprehensively, to make us intelligible to one another, to help us transcend those baleful forces of history so that we can make a new history of good neighbourliness understanding and partnership between all the people and traditions on this island.
In that context it is a pleasure to see Lord Bannside here today in this place where the technology of the twenty-first century has opened up part of the actuality of the seventeenth century to a generation capable of handling truth, together. I am sure that the Exhibition will be a huge success with the public. And I look forward to the online project enhancing mutual respect and understanding on this island.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.