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Seventeenth-century interpretations of the past: the case of Geoffrey Keating

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Bernadette Cunningham
Bernadette Cunningham*
Affiliation:
Dublin Diocesan Library
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Extract

The study of history at both national and local levels featured prominently among the intellectual activities of early modern Europeans. The desire to know more of their own countries (as evidenced by the growth of mapmaking) and the use of history as a political tool both played important parts in the emergence of the past as a vital force in the present. The same was true of early modern Ireland. Settlers coming to a new environment looked to the past both as a way of understanding their new home, and as a way of legitimising current political realities. Sir James Perrott noted in the introduction to his Chronicle of Ireland ‘the use of reading histories is twofold: either private for a man’s particular knowledge and information, or public for the application of it to the service of the state’ Thus Sir John Davies’s treatise on the Discovery of the true causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued was as much a justification of existing royal policy in Ireland as an explanation of Irish history Each, for his own reasons, was looking to the past to explain the present.

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 98 , November 1986 , pp. 116 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1986

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References

1 Perrott, , Chron. Ire., 1584–1608, p. 3.Google Scholar On the general trend, see, e.g., Piggott, Stuart, ‘Antiquarian thought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’ in Fox, Levi (ed.), English historical scholarship (Oxford, 1956)Google Scholar; Sharpe, Kevin, Sir Robert Cotton, 1586–1631 (Oxford, 1979), pp 5–12.Google Scholar

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3 The whole works … of James Ussher, ed. Elrington, C.R. and Todd, J.H. (17 vols, Dublin, 1847–64), 4, 239.Google Scholar The principal Scottish authors concerned were Buchanan, George, Rerum Scoticarum historia (Edinburgh, 1582)Google Scholar; Boece, Hector, Historia gentis Scotorum a prima gentis origine (Paris, 1527).Google Scholar

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7 Keating, Geoffrey, Foras feasa ar Éirinn; The history of Ireland, ed. Comyn, David and Dinneen, PS. (I.T.S., 4 vols, London, 1902–14), 3, 3.Google Scholar As early as 1638 the work was used by native historians as an authority against which to judge Micheál O Cléirigh’s work (see Geneal. re gum Hib., p. 148). Among other early users were the author of the Aphorismical discovery in the 1650s ( Gilbert, , Contemp. hist., 1641–52, 1, 2)Google Scholar and Walsh, Peter, A prospect of the state of Ireland (London, 1682).Google Scholar For an example of later attitudes lauding Keating’s patriotism, see McCraith, L.M., ‘At Geoffrey Keating’s grave’ in New Ireland Review, 22 (1909–10), pp 177–81.Google Scholar

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10 Keating, Eochair-sgíath an aifrinn, p. iii. Keating makes specific reference to Ware, Anc. Ir. hist., which was published in 1633. See Cronin, Anne, ‘Sources of Keating’s Forus Feasa ar Éirinn’ in Eigse, 4, pt 4 (1944), pp 241, 245.Google Scholar The earliest extant datable manuscript of Foras Feasa ar Éirinn is dated 1638, but this is a condensed version (B.L., Eg. MS 107).

11 Beare, Philip O’Sullivan, Zoilomastix, ed. O’Donnell, TJ. (I.M.C., Dublin, 1960), p. 22.Google Scholar On date of birth/death, etc., see Ó Casaide, Seamus, ‘Seathrún Céitinn’ in Irish Book Lover, 17 (1929), p. 91.Google Scholar For the traditional story of his life, see introduction to Eáin, Mac Giolla, Dánta, pp 3–7 Google Scholar; for the revised version of the story, see Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘Seathrún Céitinn (c. 1580-c. 1644): an cúlra stairiúil’ in Duchas, 1983, 1984, 1985 (Dublin, 1986), pp 56–68.

l2 Cal. S.P Ire., 1615–25, p. 318.

13 Corish, PJ., The catholic community in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Dublin, 1983), pp 27–8, 35Google Scholar; Corish, PJ., ‘The origins of catholic nationalism’ in Corish, , Ir Catholicism, 3 (Dublin, 1968), esp. pp 30–31 Google Scholar For the Counter-Reformation as social revolution, see Bossy, John, ‘The Counter-Reformation and the people of catholic Ireland, 1596–1641’ in Historical Studies, VIII, ed. Williams, TD. (Dublin, 1971), pp 155–70.Google Scholar

l4 Keating, , Trí bhiorghaoithe, p. 124.Google Scholar

15 When Keating cites Ussher, he does so as a supporter of his view and is not attempting to contradict him (Foras feasa, iii, 301). Ussher, in contrast, declares his intentions in the ‘Note to the reader’ of the 1631 discourse ‘to shew the agreement betwixt our ancestors and us [protestants] in matters of religion, and to leave the instances which might be alleged for the contrary to them unto whom the maintaining of that part did properly belong’ ( Ussher, , Whole works, 4, 376).Google Scholar

16 Keating, , Foras feasa, 1, 77 Google Scholar

l7 Ibid., i, 3

18 Cunningham, Bernadette, ‘Native culture and political change in Ireland, 1580–1640’ in Brady, Ciaran and Gillespie, Raymond (eds), Natives and newcomers: essays on the making of Irish colonial society, 1534–1641 (Dublin, 1986), pp 148–70Google Scholar; Leerssen, Joseph Th., Mere Irish and Fior-Ghael (Amsterdam, 1986), p. 216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Proinsias Cana, Mac ‘The rise of the later schools of filídheacht’ in Ériu, 25 (1974), p. 141ff.Google Scholar See also Styles, Philip, ‘Politics and historical research in the early seventeenth century’ in Fox, Levi (ed.), English historical scholarship (Oxford, 1956), p. 65 Google Scholar; Cunningham, , ‘Native culture & political change’, p. 167 Google Scholar; O’Rahilly, TF, Early Irish history and mythology (Dublin, 1946), pp 162–3.Google Scholar

20 White, Stephen, Apologia pro Hibernia adver sus Cambrì calumnias, ed. Kelly, Mathew (Dublin, 1849).Google Scholar John Lynch actively sought to promote such work and approved of the efforts of White and O’Sullivan Beare, but noted ‘it afflicts me that their works are not published and studied by the learned’ The real difficulties involved in acquiring such texts are indicated by the fact that Lynch himself did not read them. In Keating s case he went to the trouble of producing a Latin translation of the Foras Feasa, which according to Hayes, , MS sources (1966),Google Scholar is now located in Maryland, U.S.A., at Woodstock College Library

21 Keating, , Foras feasa, 1, 3–7 Google Scholar For bibliographical details of those Keating discusses, see Cronin, ‘Sources of Forus Feasa’; for a defence of Stanihurst against Keating, see Lennon, Colm, Richard Stanihurst, the Dubliner, 1548–1618 (Dublin, 1981), pp 120–23.Google Scholar

22 Keating, , Foras feasa, 3, 37 Google Scholar; i, 77; i, 31–43; Lennon, , Stanihurst, p. 88.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., ii, 75–83; Burke, Peter, The Renaissance sense of the past (London, 1969), p. 76 Google Scholar; Lynch, , Cambrensis eversus, 1, 407 Google Scholar For Keating’s shortcomings, see Ó Cuív, Brian, ‘Literary creation and Irish historical tradition’ in Proc. Brit. Acad., 54 (1963), pp 237–8Google Scholar; Byrne, FJ, ‘Senchas, the nature of Gaelic historical tradition’ in Historical Studies, IX, ed. Barry, JG. (Belfast, 1974), pp 137–59.Google Scholar

24 Keating, , Foras feasa, 1, 5, 59, 79Google Scholar; Ó Buachalla, , ‘Annála Ríoghachta Éireann is Foras feasa’, p. 83.Google Scholar On the inaccuracy of Keating’s claim that the bad habits of the clergy noted by New English writers only occurred after the Reformation, see Ó Corráin, , ‘Seathrún Céitinn’, pp 62–3.Google Scholar On parliament, see Simms, Katharine, From kings to warlords (Woodbridge, 1987), p. 77 Google Scholar

25 Ó Tuama, Sean (ed.), An Duanaire, 1600–1900: poems of the dispossessed (Portlaoise, 1981), pp 84–7Google Scholar; Keating, , Foras feasa, 1, 25 Google Scholar; cf. Williams, N.JA. (ed.), Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis (Dublin, 1981)Google Scholar; Cunningham, , ‘Native culture & political change’, pp 159–60.Google Scholar

26 E.g., Spenser, View.

27 Keating, , Foras feasa, 3, 299–307, 357Google Scholar

28 SAnn. Inisf., s.a. 1110; Ann. Loch Cé, s.a. 1110. For analysis of the secular/regular dispute, see Clarke, Aidan, ‘Colonial identity in seventeenth-century Ireland’ in Nationality and the pursuit of national independence: Historical Studies, XI, ed. Moody, TW (Belfast, 1978), pp 63–71 Google Scholar

29 Lawlor, H.J., St Bernard of Clairvaux’s life of Malachy (Dublin, 1920),Google Scholar introd., pp xxxvii-xxxix.

30 The Ó Maolconaire and Ó Duigeanain families of east Connacht were involved in the transcription of both the Annals of the Four Masters and Foras Feasa ar Éirinn ( Keating, , Foras feasa, 2,Google Scholar introd., pp xxviii-xxix), and earlier links existed in the use of common sources such as Conall Mac Geoghegan’s annals. But the picture still persists of Keating working in isolation, and we find it reported by John Roche that he knew Keating was working on a history of Ireland which might have been of interest to Luke Wadding, but added ‘I have no interest in the man, for I never saw him, for he dwelleth in Munster’ (Roche to Wadding, 19 July 1631, Wadding papers, p. 544, Corish, , ‘Origins of catholic nationalism’, p. 31).Google Scholar

31 Lynch, , Cambrensis eversus, 1, p. viii.Google Scholar On scribal alterations, see Keating, Foras feasa, ii, introd. pp xv-xviii, xxiv-xxxv On English circulation, see Carpenter, Andrew, ‘New light on early eighteenth-century Irish historiography?. King, Swift, Keating and Raymond’ (unpublished lecture to Irish Historical Society, 8 May 1984).Google Scholar

32 Keating, , Foras feasa, 3, 347 Google Scholar

33 Ibid., iii, 369.

34 lbid., iii, 369; Davies, , Discovery, p. [287]Google ScholarPubMed

35 Keating, , Foras feasa, 3, 359–67Google Scholar; Cronin, , ‘Sources of Forus Feasa’, pp 243–50.Google Scholar

36 As one early eighteenth-century poem written on the Continent noted: ‘Ata an Foras Feasa fann, Eagna na sean ar seachmall, ó d’imigh uainn báird ár scoile, fás gach both gan buanfhaire’ ( Dán an mBráthar Mionúir, i, ed. Craith, Cuthbert Mhag (Dublin, 1967), p. 368).Google Scholar

37 I am grateful to Dr Raymond Gillespie, Dr Micheál Mac Craith and the early modern seminar group at Trinity College, Dublin, for their comments on earlier versions of this paper