History - Masters by Research Theses

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The life and politics of Thomas Spring Rice 1st Baron of Monteagle of Brandon 1790-1866
(University College Cork, 1991) Murphy, Charlotte Mary; Murphy, John A.
In the heart of Limerick city there is a peaceful and leafy public park. A very tall column dominates its beauty. Few people know the name of the man in whose honour this monument was raised. In fact, it was built to express the city's admiration for Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon, (1790-1866). (1) Spring Rice was born on 8 February 1790, at 21 Mungret Street, Limerick. (2) He was returned as a Whig MP for the city in 1820 and went on to become Under Secretary of State for the Home Department 1827; Secretary to the Treasury 1830-1834; Colonial Secretary 1834 and Chancellor of the Exchequer 1835-1839. Baron Monteagle of Brandon was the title he chose when he was raised to the peerage 1n 1839. (3) Thomas Babington Macaulay when writing to Spring Rice 1n 1835 indicated the level of talent this man possessed. I see no man among the Whigs so well qualified as yourself by talent for business and talent for debate combined to lead the House of Commons, or 1n other words, to rule the empire. (4) In spite of this it would be safe to state that Spring Rice is now almost completely unknown. There is no biography dealing with his life and work. Only two articles have been written about him .The Dictionary of National Biography (5) published one which deals, briefly and superficially with his career and The North Munster Antiquarian Journal has published 'The Chairing of Thomas Spring Rice' by Robert Herbert, which gives the background to his election as MP in 1820 and goes on to deal briefly with the achievements of his political life. (6) In The Dictionary of Irish Biography(7) Thomas Spring Rice is not even mentioned and in A Dictionary of Irish History Since 1800 8) he is described, incorrectly, as a Tory MP. The outline of his life given in this book is extremely short and unhelpful. On the Irish side the reason for this neglect is not difficult to understand. Spring Rice was a landlord, a Protestant and a passionate supporter of the Union of Ireland with Britain. Therefore, he is outside the nationalist, separatist, anti-landlord traditions which have dominated the writing of Irish history since 1922. The neglect he has suffered in Great Britain, arises, I believe, from the fact that he was not a member of one of its great noble families and he never became prime minister. The highest position he held was that of chancellor of the exchequer at a period of great economic difficulty and social unrest. It seems that he is consigned to oblivion because his policies did nothing to deal with the enormous problems of a disappearing gold reserve; an almost total stoppage of credit facilities from the banks and a consequent huge rise in unemployment. Because of the almost total neglect of this interesting man I felt that it would be more useful to attempt to look at his life in general rather than take one particular aspect and look at it in exhaustive detail.
Inoculation in eighteenth century Boston
(University College Cork, 2025) Whitacre, Kymberly Ann; Dooley, Brendan
In 1721, what became the first anti-vaccination debate in America began, where Cotton Mather and Zabdiel Boylston advocated for the introduction and use of inoculation to protect the people of Boston from smallpox. William Douglass and James Franklin wrote publications against inoculation and ultimately swayed the community towards not having the procedure done. The publications between the two sides has been named ‘the paper war’. Who would have been capable of reading these and how would the information have spread? Through an examination of literacy rates, it is shown that women were in a position where they could have read the works, and their community roles helped spread the news. The roles of women within Colonial Boston were nuanced, and the spread of information was crucial to their communities, specifically within their neighbourhoods. Ultimately, the research findings show that the people of Boston were unwilling to submit to inoculation, with the exception of under 300 people, and that the anti-inoculation side was the successful party in the paper war. Future epidemics show a slow change in that, however, and through people like George Washington going against orders to inoculate his soldiers in the Revolutionary War, and the Supreme Court case Jacobson v. Massachusetts the practice of inoculation, and then vaccination, is shown as effective, with smallpox being fully eradicated worldwide by the 1980’s.
Meiler fitz Henry and the 1207 Royal Settlement of Desmond
(University College Cork, 2025) Scollard, Nicholas; Edwards, David; Scully, Jeremiah D; n/a; n/a
Previous assessments of Meiler fitz Henry’s tenure as justiciar of Ireland (c.1198-1208) have tended to focus on his role in managing relations between the English Crown and its leading colonial magnates in Ireland. This thesis aims to broaden that narrow perspective and provide fresh insight into Meiler’s career by examining a set of land grants relating to Desmond (South Munster) that were issued by the Crown at the council of Woodstock in November 1207, and whose design owed much to fitz Henry’s influence and initiative. It begins with a brief overview of Meiler’s early career and rise to the office of justiciar, before discussing the policy he pursued in Desmond during the period 1200-08, where he curtailed baronial power and, from 1204, worked to augment royal authority and lay the groundwork for the introduction of shire government. The grants of 1207 marked the culmination of Meiler’s southern project. Each of the grantees ((I) David de la Roche, (II) Richard de Cogan, (III) Henry, Maurice, Eneas, and Audoen fitz Philip, (IV) Philip de Prendergast, and (V) Robert fitz Martin) are examined in turn. These men were all drawn from Meiler’s extended political circle, they and/or their family members often sharing with Meiler and his kinsmen origins in the Pembroke March and intimate links during the early years of the Irish conquest, which were subsequently bolstered by marriage, tenancy (including in Desmond), and service in fitz Henry’s government. As well as his Geraldine kinsmen, the grants reveal the importance of Meiler’s seldom-noted de Ridelesford relatives (the children of his sister, Mabel) in facilitating him to foster these personal and political connections. The deeds also demonstrate how Meiler and the Crown harnessed fitz Henry’s social network to win key supporters for the justiciar in his struggle against the baronial rebellion then ongoing in Ireland. Many of the grantees or their family members held strategic lands within the dissident liberties, not just in William Marshal’s lordship of Leinster, but also in and close to his earldom of Pembroke, and within William de Briouze’s honour of Limerick. Their support would expose the rebel lordships to royalist attack, and help Meiler and the Crown to maintain firm control over supply lines crossing the Irish Sea. Finally, in Desmond the new grants satisfied both the aims of royal policy and Meiler’s personal ambitions. Violating the existing tenurial structure, these enfeoffments were set to create a colonial community which enjoyed a direct relationship with the Crown and whose lands were open to intrusion by royal officials. Its new lords would primarily help to bolster the defences of the existing colony (and most importantly the city of Cork) against attack from the Gaelic Irish of southwest Munster, and, more ambitiously, by expanding into uncolonized territory, could work to unite the two disconnected zones of English Desmond (the settlement around Cork and its counterpart in Kerry) into one coherent territorial unit, crucial if western Desmond was to be adequately served by a single shire. At the same time the grants allowed Meiler to reward kinsmen and followers with land in this part of the Irish colony, and to benefit from its expansion in his attempts to secure and settle his own remote lands there. The issuing of the Woodstock grants, when coupled with the completion of the shiring of Desmond – one of the most important institutional developments in the history of the medieval Irish colony – around the same time, secured the legacy of this southern project, and may be used to recharacterize Meiler’s departure from office in 1208 in a more positive light than has hitherto been allowed.
Macroom: pastimes (non-sport) and community, after 1900; a history of seven pastimes in a small country Cork town
(University College Cork, 2025) Kelleher, Cornelius Christopher; Mccarthy, Andrew; Roszman, Jay
This local history study is about my home place Macroom, a small County Cork town, roughly halfway between Cork and Killarney. Because of its central Munster location it has always been strategically important. Macroom Castle dates from the eleventh century and its ownership has marked political control of the area. East of Macroom, on its Cork-city side, the land is generally good and fertile; to the west it is rockier and poorer. Proximity to Cork and land-quality were reasons for English influence being stronger east rather than west where the Gaelic tradition survived better, signified by surviving Gaeltachtaí within fifteen miles. Macroom stands on this synapse and experienced the contest of British and Irish political and cultural control of Ireland; its location and experience underlies the history of most activities, pastimes included, that transpired in Macroom. It incorporated land-, property-ownership and wealth, and language, religion, culture and education. It is in this atmosphere that Macroom pastimes, symbols of its culture, existed, developed or died. Economic and especially technological advances ensured that Macroom did not stay isolated and outside influences were mediated through cinema, radio and television (the internet’s effect was small before 1990s); all played important roles in the evolution of Macroom pastimes. These effects are not unique to Macroom - this study records Macroom’s story/history in this regard. The pastimes chosen are card-playing, dance, pubs, cinema, radio and television, ICA-attendance and pantomime. They were selected because of their importance, support, impact, availability of reliable sources and balance. In the interest of gender-equality the history of he ICA was chosen; unexpectedly its history is both revealing and important in Macroom’s history. Because of space, other areas such as children’s and church-centred pastimes were not included. Chapters examine the provenance of each pastime, its ‘journey’ to Macroom, its progress thereafter; relevant factors are examined and assessed, and an interpretation offered of its contribution, impact and importance. Conclusions derived confirmed are that people need entertainments; that pastimes are important because paradoxically they are not important; that authorities, state and clerical, perhaps inadvertently acknowledged and reinforced their status by numerous laws, rules and regulations; that pastimes often gave ‘colour’ and deeper meaning to life. They also informed, educated and changed attitudes and society. Macroom experienced all these effects and transitions. The background factors are common to many towns but Macroom’s response is unique. This work records an important part of Macroom’s history.
Cork Harbour Commissioners in the nineteenth century: governance, infrastructure and revenue
(University College Cork, 2020-10-08) McCarthy, Tom; Bielenberg, Andrew
Cork, the port and harbour will be examined in terms of its economic history in the 19th century, with emphasis on matters of governance, infrastructure, and finances. This thesis presents an analysis and evaluation of Cork Harbour Commissioners (CHC) from its early beginnings in the 19th century up to 1900. Like many organisations, it seems that CHC responded quite slowly to the immediate challenges it faced after it was established. It took some years to develop the harbour into a safe, cost-effective, and coherent operation adequately handling the import and export demands of the port. Improvements took place over decades rather than years, but once the necessary infrastructure was put in place the benefits were immediate. Given that the region failed to industrialise, and the population of the city stagnated in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the population of its hinterland declined, the port performed reasonably well relative to its competition in the Munster region, Limerick and Waterford, and it was better served by rail and road links and its more central location to Munster’s wealthier agricultural districts. Dublin and Belfast in contrast both had demographic advantages and greater industrial development and were in a better position to handle the expansion of Anglo-Irish trade in the nineteenth century. With a combination of borrowing and increased income from imports, the state of the harbour improved significantly for shipping coming up into the city. The period between the 1860s and the end of the nineteenth century, therefore, stands out as the critical period in the development of the city quays and the channel up from Passage, in addition to the development of Queenstown for American mails and migrant traffic. In this window, the Cork Harbour Commissioners were able to mobilise sufficient capital resources to shape much of the infrastructure of the port and harbour which we can still see today. The increase in income generated by imports allowed the authority to invest in infrastructure. It is evident that CHC was able to exploit rising import revenue from a range of bulk commodities, and this helped to place the ports financial position on a far more solid footing.

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