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
Settlers in the five counties represented in this volume found it easier to escape to Scotland than Dublin after the outbreak of rebellion, but hundreds of examinations taken in the early 1650s provide first-hand evidence of what took place, particularly in the north- east. The testimony of many witnesses throws light on a confused local struggle, in which Scots appeared on both sides, and reconstructs in detail its most controversial episode, the killings on Island Magee.
