Trinity College Dublin 1641 Depositions website

[Paddy Casey]

Ellen Crehan on the Clare Projects list just flagged the most interesting "1641 Depositions" site at http://1641.tcd.ie/index.php . It was completed at the end of September 2010.

The 1641 Depositions (Trinity College Dublin, MSS 809-841) are witness testimonies mainly by Protestants, but also by some Catholics, from all social backgrounds, concerning their experiences of the 1641 Irish rebellion. The testimonies document the loss of goods, military activity, and the alleged crimes committed by the Irish insurgents, including assault, stripping, imprisonment and murder. This body of material is unparalleled anywhere in early modern Europe, and provides a unique source of information for the causes and events surrounding the 1641 rebellion and for the social, economic, cultural, religious, and political history of seventeenth-century Ireland, England and Scotland.

The site is full of Clare depositions containing names of people and places and graphic descriptions of events. It is difficult to do text searches on the documents because, for example, the place names are almost all spelled completely differently from the present-day spellings. However, anyone with local knowledge will have no difficulty interpreting them and, for those of us who keep collections of synonyms of the placenames that interest us they are a goldmine.

Set aside a couple of hours (to start with) and begin browsing right away !

Paddy