MEEHAN, C.P. The Rise, Increase, and Exit of The Geraldines, Earls of Desmond, and the Persecution after their fall. Translated from the Latin of Dominic O’Daly, O.P., with Memoir and Notes.

Dublin: James Duffy, 1847. 16mo. pp. xii, 238. With bookplate of Lisbon Convent. Qtr. green morocco on marbled boards. Minor wear, otherwise very good.

Dedicated to Joseph Casimir O’Meagher, Esq., Solicitor.

Donal O’Daly was born in 1593 at Kilsarkan, County Kerry, he was known in the Dominican Order, to which he belonged as Father Dominic of the Rosary, on the continent as Frey Domingo and to the English as a dangerous Irishman and meddlesome friar. He was descended from the learned bardic family of Ó Dálaigh who were, for centuries, poets to the Desmond Fitzgeralds. In early life he was educated by the Dominican order in Tralee. Dominic was professed at Lugo in Galicia, studied for a time at Burgos in Old Castile, and after ordination taught theology at Bordeaux, before returning to Tralee. The noblemen and gentry of Kerry, headed by Donal The O’Sullivan More, signed a petition in 1631, to have him promoted to the See of Ardfert, sent it to the Pope in Rome, and likewise, Fr. Oliver de Burgo (Bourke) had letters from the archbishops and bishops of Munster for the same purpose, but Father O’Daly would not accept it. Shortly after this he was appointed superior of Louvain, where a Dominican College was recently founded by Isabella, Regent of the Netherlands. In 1634 he moved to Portugal, and played an important part in the revolution of 1640 which freed that kingdom from Spain, making the Duke of Braganza the king. He was appointed Confessor to the Queen, and is said to have declined the Archbishopric of Braga in Portugal and Goa in India. He played an important diplomatic role during this time, undertaking discreet missions to England. He was appointed by the new king, John IV, Ambassador of Portugal to the Court of Louis XIV of France. He fulfilled his office admirably moving in the court circles of Europe, but always a good religious, living piously in the Dominican priory. Later he became Censor to the Supreme Court of the Inquisition. O’Daly founded an Irish Dominican College in Lisbon, not far from the royal palace, of which he was appointed first rector, and also founded there a convent for fifty Irish nuns. What disturbed him most was the worsening situation in Ireland, in the wake of the Cromwellian persecutions and confiscations. The agony and the ecstasy comes through in his Geraldines: “Our empire was once bounded by the ocean, our fame by the stars, but now to be a Catholic is to be called a traitor, and to be a native, a rebel”. The present work, was originally published at Lisbon in 1655, by the printer to the king of Portugal. The first part of the work is an account of the Fitzgeralds, Earls of Desmond, from their origins in Italy, their arrival in Ireland with the Anglo-Norman invasion down to the betrayal and slaying of Gerald, Earl of Desmond in 1583. The second part details the fate of the Catholics of Ireland, after the extinction of the Geraldine earls: “Is there not, for example, the history of the martyrdom of John Bourke, who perished by the hands of the executioners for no other crime than having given refuge to priests, and allowed the holy sacrifice of the Mass to be celebrated in his castle of Brittas”. Fr. O’Daly was a great Irishman, and in every sense of the word - a true European, centuries before it was in vogue. The author died in 1662. These are the concluding words of the Latin inscription on Fr. Dominic O’Daly’s last resting place in Lisbon: “Successful in the royal legations he undertook, he was conspicuous for prudence, learning and piety”. An ideal opportunity to acquire one of the historic rarities of Irish books.

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