The Rebels of Ireland: The Dublin Saga - By Edward Rutherfurd Page 0,3

that Joan has recently shown incredible generosity toward him, offering a loan to help with his dire financial circumstances. Margaret feels ashamed when she realizes she has misinterpreted all of Joan’s seemingly cruel actions and spurned a woman whose intentions were actually never anything but kind.

For the O’Byrnes, however, more strife is in store. Sean and Eva have been raising a foster child named Maurice, who was born into the powerful Fitzgerald family. When Maurice is no longer a child, Lady Fitzgerald announces that Sean O’Byrne is his father; this is why she put the child in Sean’s care. In the wake of Eva’s fury and humiliation, Maurice flees to Dublin. There in the heart of the English Pale, a family friend advises him to erase all Irish traces of his name. Thus Maurice Fitzgerald, whose lineage includes princely O’Byrnes, noble Walshes, courageous Conall, and centuries of chieftains, becomes Maurice Smith.

It becomes clear that the romantic revolution of Silken Thomas’s dreams are receiving no support from the continent; Henry VIII sends in troops, and in 1536 the Irish Parliament passes measures renouncing the Pope and swearing allegiance to the Tudor king. Seventy-five of the men who had acted with Silken Thomas are sentenced to execution. The fall of the Fitzgeralds signals an irrevocable defeat for all of Ireland.

The Princes of Ireland closes with the image of Cecily Tidy gazing in horror as a fire blazes in front of Christ Church Cathedral. Icons are being publicly burned in an attempt to purge Ireland of Catholicism, a practice that would herald new battles for the very soul of the island as politics and religion begin their fiery mingling. Rutherfurd paints an ominous concluding scene in which ornate relics are added to the pyre, and the Bachall Iosa—the jewel-encrusted reliquary of the Staff of Saint Patrick himself, one of the holiest and most awesome relics in Ireland—disappears forever. It is a haunting moment, destined to transform the descendants of princes into rebels.

The Rebels of Ireland continues the story of these families and of the additional fictional families of Smith, Pincher, Budge, Law, Madden, and others.

PLANTATION

1597

DOCTOR SIMEON PINCHER knew all about Ireland.

Doctor Simeon Pincher was a tall, thin, balding man, still in his twenties, with a sallow complexion and stern black eyes that belonged in a pulpit. He was a learned man, a graduate and fellow of Emmanuel College, at Cambridge University. When he had been offered a position at the new foundation of Trinity College in Dublin, however, he had come thither with such alacrity that his new hosts were quite surprised.

“I shall come at once,” he had written to them, “to do God’s work.” With which reply, no one could argue.

Not only did he come with the stated zeal of a missionary. Even before his arrival in Ireland, Doctor Pincher had informed himself thoroughly about its inhabitants. He knew, for instance, that the mere Irish, as the original native Irish were now termed in England, were worse than animals, and that, as Catholics, they could not be trusted.

But the special gift that Doctor Pincher brought to Ireland was his belief that the mere Irish were not only an inferior people, but that God had deliberately marked them out—along with others, too, of course—since the beginning of time, to be cast into eternal hellfire. For Doctor Simeon Pincher was a follower of Calvin.

To understand Doctor Pincher’s version of the subtle teachings of the great Protestant reformer, it was only necessary to listen to one of his sermons—for he was already accounted a fine preacher, greatly praised for his clarity.

“The logic of the Lord,” he would declare, “like His love, is perfect. And since we are endowed with the faculty of reason, with which God in His infinite goodness has bestowed upon us, we may see His purpose as it is.” Leaning forward slightly towards his audience to ensure their concentration, Doctor Pincher would then explain.

“Consider. It is undeniable that God, the fount of all knowledge—to whom all ages are but as the blinking of an eye—must in His infinite wisdom know all things, past, present, and to come. And therefore it must be that even now, He knows full well who upon the Day of Judgement is to be saved, and who shall be cast down into the pit of Hell. He has established all things from the beginning. It cannot be otherwise. Even though, in His mercy, He has left us ignorant of our fate, some have already been chosen for Heaven