In 1938, Dr Mark Ryan, who had joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Lancashire in 1865, declared in the foreword to his book ‘Fenian Memories’, that ‘next to my religion, Fenianism has been the greatest thing in my life’. Not all Irish nationalists, however, who had enthusiastically embraced Fenianism as young men remained loyal to […]
Tag: Bernard McAnulty
This post explores the background to a heated night in Newcastle upon Tyne in February 1884, when Michael Davitt, former Fenian gun-runner and ex-Dartmoor prisoner, came face to face with Tyneside Fenians opposed to the Irish Land League, the very cause that had defined his nationalism since 1879. The Amnesty Association was formed in Dublin […]
In 1860 and again in 1870, young Irish Catholic men from the North East of England went to Rome to fight for the Pope in his struggle with Italian nationalist forces. This post will explore the background to this extraordinary episode and look at six of the Papal soldiers, all coal miners from Crook, whose […]
exiles in england 