Description
The 1641 Depositions 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. This body of material is unparalleled anywhere in early modern Europe. It 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.
In total, 19,010 manuscript pages in 31 bound volumes held at Trinity College Dublin have been transcribed and are arranged for publication in 12 volumes from 2014 onwards. The depositions are available online at www.1641.tcd.ie
The distinctive feature of this first volume of depositions is the richness and clarity with which it illustrates the contrasting experiences of the outbreak of rebellion in the systematically settled plantation county of Armagh, the informally colonised county of Monaghan and the predominantly Old English community of Louth. Between them, these witnesses provide some of the best known and many of the least known reports of the rebellion.
