A second look at the ‘devil incarnate’

IT is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of the publication of the 1641 Depositions in Trinity College Library, hidden from view (in the best Trinity manner) for well over three centuries.

They provide detailed accounts of the massacre of Protestant settlers at the outbreak of the 1641 rebellion and future study of them will surely alter our perception of the nature of religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland.

Who knows? Perhaps we may even have to revise our historical judgment of that devil incarnate, Oliver Cromwell.

We may certainly be encouraged by the publication of such documents to challenge wherever we find them (and from whatever direction) expressions of sectarian hatred. Neither side in this terrible conflict has a monoply of truth and justice. I express my warmest congratulations to the Department of History and to Prof Jane Ohlmeyer and also to their colleagues in Aberdeen and Cambridge.

Gerald Morgan

Trinity College

Dublin 2