COUNTESS TYRONE AND THE EARLS

Press Release: 

‘Countess Tyrone And The Earls.’

May Cassidy

The genre is historical fiction a true story of the greatest event in Irish history 1607. One that reverberates to the present day. As a historian I take my work seriously I research facts taken from documents such as the English state Papers. Historical Periodicals, even though these facts are open to dispute and interpretation. The one difference between my work and that of the historian is that I give the characters a voice, feelings, bringing them to life. Hopefully when you read Countess Tyrone and the Earls you shall see I have clothed them in colourful images that leave a lasting memory of a forgotten period in Irish and English history.    

It is a vivid picture of four women marginalized, airbrushed from the greatest event to befall Ireland, an event wrapped in deceit, passion, courage, strength, imprisonment,  betrayal, suffering the worst affliction imaginable – that of having to flee leaving a child behind to the most terrible fate. Both Catherine Magennis , Bridget Fitzgerald, Naula O Donnell and Rosa O Doherty flee on the coat tails of their Irish Nobel husbands Earl Tyrone, Earl Tyrconnell  Earl Maguire and Cathabarr O Donnell.  Forced out by the English Privy council acting on the orders of king James 1.  It is a story of the beginning of the plantation of English and Scottish settlers that endures to the present day.

These women were educated, intelligent, speaking three of four languages, involved in political live of the period, influential in changing their husband’s decisions. Bridget Fitzgerald was the wife of Henry Fitzgerald; her four uncles died in the Tower Of London charged with treason. Related to Earl Tyrone by marriage his Grandfather first wife was Lady Alice Fitzgerald; she was the grand-daughter of the Dowager Kildare Mabel Brown a relation of Ann Boleyn

Catherine Magennis was the daughter of Sir Hugh Magennis an old English Settler loyal to the crown. I want to high light the bravery of these women who endured near shipwreck, road over the worse dangerous terrain possible. To France, Flanders (the Spanish Netherlands), the frozen Swiss Alps on oxen, Italy and Rome. The book also depicts the social culture food, clothes, superstitions, religion. Death, heartbreak, but keeping hope alive in the mist of despair.

May Cassidy

Cadamstown, Broadford, Carbury, Moyvalley, Co. Kildare.