Lecture: "A Career Doomed to Failure? Sir Thomas Cusack (1505–71) and the Tudor Conquest of Ireland"
Friday, October 4, 2024 3:30–5:00 PM
- Location
- DescriptionAs part of the Keough-Naughton Institute's fall 2024 speaker series, Ciaran Brady, emeritus professor of early modern history and historiography at Trinity College Dublin, will deliver a lecture based on his forthcoming book about Sir Thomas Cusack.
Lecture Abstract
Thomas Cusack was at the forefront of Irish politics from the 1530s to the early 1570s. Closely associated with every initiative of Tudor policy in Ireland from the Reformation, the conciliatory policy of surrender, and regrant to the introduction of provincial presidencies, he was the only Irish-born official in the years after 1534 to hold the office of chief governor. Yet he remains one of those elusive figures who appear, positively but fleetingly, in historical studies of sixteenth century Ireland. No monograph devoted to Cusack has ever been attempted, and he has not even been the recipient of a single scholarly article. In this lecture, Ciaran Brady seeks to redress this neglect, but more importantly to question the underlying interpretative assumptions from which it arose.
Speaker Biography
Ciaran Brady, MRIA, is emeritus professor of early modern history and historiography, and Fellow Emeritus, at Trinity College Dublin. The author of several books, including The chief governors: the rise and fall of reform government in Tudor Ireland (Cambridge, 1994) and James Anthony Froude : an intellectual biography of a Victorian prophet (Oxford, 2013), his latest book, Sir Thomas Cusack: a Tudor career in sixteenth century Ireland, is currently being prepared for publication.
Originally published at irishstudies.nd.edu. - Websitehttps://events.nd.edu/events/2024/10/04/lecture-ciaran-brady-a-career-doomed-to-failure-sir-thomas-cusack-1505-1571-and-the-tudor-conquest-of-ireland/