Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd

Sources of Australian History by M. ClarkReview by: F. S. L. LyonsIrish Historical Studies, Vol. 11, No. 43 (Mar., 1959), pp. 261-262Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications LtdStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30005894 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 22:26

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toIrish Historical Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.174 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 22:26:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Short notices 261 If so, this could be an explanation of their restlessness, their individualism, and their impatience of restraint. Below the level of scepticism eighteenth-century society was still intolerant, so that too much need not be made of presbyterian bigotry. Much of the evidence for this comes from the recently published diary of Charles Woodmason, an Anglican missionary in South Carolina, and a very partizan witness.

E. R. R. GREEN EARLY MODERN EUROPE FROM ABOUT 1450 TO ABOUT 1720. By Sir

George Clark. Pp. 261. London: Oxford Univ. Press. I957. 7s. 6d.

THIs is a reprint of the author's contribution to The European inheritance edited by Sir E. Barker, Sir G. Clark and P. Vaucher (Oxford, i954). He begins with a panorama of a Europe living almost in isolation from the rest of the world, threatened by Islam, preoccupied with its classical past, diversified by manifold local peculiarities, but forming one civilization by virtue of similarities of social foundation and a superstructure of unity provided by the church and the universities. With many apt and out of the way details Sir George traces the ending of Europe's seclusion by the great overseas enterprises, its preservation from the Turlkish danger, its rapidly growing wealth, its achievements, such as the scientific move- ment, which made it possible for some seventeenth-century Europeans to claim that their age had outstripped the ancient world, and the loosening of the ties of unity consequent upon the reformation and the growing strength both of state and nation. Characteristically quiet but deft pricks puncture the more insubstantial bubbles of the historians of ideas, as in the discussion of the application of the concept of the baroque, and Sir George Clark can always be trusted to deal sensibly with controversial points, as in his sober defence of the scientific movement against the obscurantist tendencies evident in some evaluations by literary historians and critics. In only one respect it may be felt that he falters a little: he seems to be not quite at ease with the iron men of the reformations, Luther, Calvin and Loyola, but this is a minor blemish in a chapter that contains such an illuminating discussion as that in which the author contends that these men added a new figure to the gallery of types who had been admired and imitated in the past, that of the reformer, who now took his place alongside the just ruler, the learned doctor, the saint and .the knight sans peur et sans reproche.

The author, in short, has provided not simply another stale text for students, but a richly suggestive history of the thoughts and actions of the leaders of Europe during a period 'when civilization was still thought of, and with much truth, as the creation of the few, exceptional men'.

DAVID LARGE SOURCES OF AUSTRALIAN HISTORY. Selected and edited by M. Clark.

Pp. xii, 622. 1957. London: Oxford Univ. Press. 9s. 6d. (World's LClassics.)

PROFESSOR MICHAEL CLARKIC is to be congratulated on this excellent collection of source-material for Australian history. Designed for a public

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.174 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 22:26:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

z6z Short notices which is almost totally ignorant of the subject, it covers a great deal of ground thoroughly and at the same time readably. Apart from two opening chapters on the discovery of Australia and on the convict settlements, the book is primarily intended to illustrate both the problems and tensions in the country from the time of the gold discoveries onwards, and also the perennial Australian optimism, which has survived triumphantly nearly two centuries of harsh and often precarious living.

It is a pity, however, that economic questions should have been crowded out to such an extent by political and social developments, though it must be admitted that the latter are admirably documented- not merely from official reports and papers, but also from newspapers, ballads and modern Australian poetry. F. S. L. LYONS

PERIODICALS Seanchas Ardmhacha, vol. ii, no. 2 (1957). Fr Canice Mooney gives

a highly interesting account of the career of the seventeenth-century Ulster Franciscan, Francis Magruairk, who is described as Luke Wadding's bitterest opponent. Magruairk early became influenced by pro-Ormondist propaganda alleging laxity in his order and for a time played the part of rather imprudent protagonist of reform, clashing unhappily with the authorities at home and abroad. Next we find him as an important agent of the northern interest and having access to the highest political and ecclesiastical circles in Ireland and on the continent. Then when all was lost, he campaigned against Wadding, accusing him of being the instrument of failure. Finally by 1664 he had become a protestant in England, and in I665 he 'died a heretic' in Dublin.

In 'The clergy of Blessed Oliver Plunkett', Fr D. Mac Ph6il provides the introduction to his proposed biographical dictionary of the primate's secular clergy; and in 'Liimhscribhinn o Chiiige Uladh i Chicago' Fr O Fiaich describes and catalogues a Gaelic MS written by Feidhlim O Neill, the Tyrone Franciscan of that name, Fr 6 Fiaich shows, who flourished in the first half of the eighteenth century.

The section of the journal devoted to documents contains six articles. 'The Irish Cistercian documents in Octavian's Register, Armagh', by Fr Columcille, comprises editions (with commentary) of eleven letters (nine from the Armagh and two from the Dijon archives), written between 1487 approximately and I501I. Mr T. G. F. Paterson in 'The Armagh manor court rolls' gives descriptions, texts, and indexes of these and some related documents which provide lists of tenants of Armagh lands in the first half of the seventeenth century. Mr Glancy continues his series on 'The church lands of Armagh' with further annotated documents and indexes. In the series 'Danta fi Chl~ir Ardmhacha' Fr 0 Fiaich edits a poem by Sein O Neachtain entitled 'An din ar bhroid Phadraig Ui Dhonnghaile, Easbag', that is, on Rev. Dr Patrick O'Donelly (c. I649- 1716), bishop of Dromore and reputedly the subject of the ballad called the 'The bard of Armagh'. M.O.C. prints the 'Will and codicils of

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.174 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 22:26:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions