First Thoughts: Kingdom Overthrown

FITZGIBBON’s book is an in-depth and fascinating account of William of Orange’s war against his father-in-law, the deposed James II, a Catholic, on Irish shores.

Fitzgibbon’s research is vast. Through the use of journals, correspondence, biographies, state papers, eye-witness accounts and personal diaries such as George Story’s, a Williamite chaplain who travelled with this colourful and daunting army, he weaves an epic tale.

Ireland, a rich fertile territory, was always going to prove interesting to the English — a land where taxes could fatten the king’s coffers. Strangely enough, the Irish ruling classes, the Gaels, the Gaelic Normans, and the ‘Old English’ settlers, all Catholic, didn’t quite agree.