Spying on Hibernia: Intelligence Gathering in Ireland, 1660-1900

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) invites you to a one-day symposium on Spying on Hibernia: Intelligence Gathering in Ireland, 1660-1900.

Opening Remarks: Stephen Scarth, Head of Public Services (PRONI)

PANEL 1: The Seventeenth Century: 10.00-11.30am

Dr Neil Johnston (The National Archives UK, Head of Early Modern Records) - Securing Ireland, 1660–1685: State Intelligence in the reign of Charles II

Dr Eoin Kinsella (Royal Irish Academy, Managing-editor of the Dictionary of Irish Biography) - Acting in plain sight: Catholic agents and double agents in Jacobite and Williamite Ireland

Dr Frances Nolan (University College Dublin, SFI-IRC Pathway Fellow) - Zealous for ‘the Cause’: Irish women as Jacobite agents, 1689-1720

PANEL 2: The Eighteenth Century: 12.00 -1.30pm

Prof Thomas Bartlett ( University of Aberdeen, Professor Emeritus of Irish History)- Opposing Insurgency: The letters of George Holdcroft, postmaster, Kells, County Meath, to Dublin Castle, 1793-1803

Dr Jonathan Wright (Maynooth University, Lecturer)- The clergyman and the informer: John Cleland, Nicholas Mageean and the gathering of intelligence in late eighteenth-century Saintfield

Ruairí Nolan (Independent Scholar, creator of Ireland and the Age of Revolution newsletter) - Pyrrhic Justice: the success and failure of British Intelligence in the arrest and trial of Revd. William F. Jackson 1794-5

Lunch Break 1:30 pm-3:00 pm

PANEL 3: The Nineteenth Century: 3.00 - 4.30pm

Hugh Murphy (Maynooth University, PhD and Deputy Librarian) - To discover the origin, nature and extent of the Evil’: distilling truth from fiction in managing unrest in early nineteenth century Ireland

Dr Jay Roszman (University College Cork, Lecturer) - Creating ‘Intelligence’ out of Chaos: Outrage Papers and the Production of Political Knowledge, 1836-1855

Prof William Nolan ( University College Dublin, Emeritus Professor of Geography) - Spies and Informers and the collapse of the Young Ireland movement 1848

CONCLUDING REMARKS/DISCUSSION

4:30 pm- 5:00 pm

Host or Publisher DfC Engaged Communities Group