We need to explain our complex history, such as some 3,000 French Huguenots fought at Battle of Boyne

The commemoration of the battle of the Boyne, a central event in the European wars of religion, has been reduced to a sectarian conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.
By Letters
Published 14th Jul 2020, 16:45 GMT
Letter to the editorLetter to the editor
Letter to the editor

But we need to explain among other things the presence of some 3,000 French Huguenots at the Boyne in 1690.

The Edict of Nantes, promulgated by Henry IV on 13 April 1598, granted a measure of toleration to a Protestant minority in France and was designed to bring to an end the religious conflict begun in 1562.

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But it was annulled by the celebrated Cardinal de Richelieu in 1629 and more significantly revoked by Louis XIV on 18 October 1685, a sectarian act which drove the Huguenots out of France, many of them to Ireland.

Such religious conflict is a source of misunderstanding and even hatred in Ireland today.

The Easter Rising (unlike 1798) was in essence a Catholic and Gaelic rising. Archbishop McQuaid’s ban on attendance at Trinity College Dublin (1944-1970), the great Protestant university of All-Ireland (1592-1920), was a further source of exclusion and sectarian mistrust.

We must find a way of moving on from these renewals of religious conflict, south and north, in 2020.

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Perhaps the meeting between the new Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, and the First Minister, Arlene Foster, can help.

They have an opportunity which perhaps Sean Lemass and Terence O’Neill did not have in 1965.

Thank God for the corona virus in taking Irish people off the streets in triumphalist sectarian celebrations of one kind or another.

Ireland abu.

Dr Gerald Morgan, Dublin

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Related topics:Northern IrelandArlene Foster