Author(s): Janet Todd (Francis Hutcheson Professor, University of Glasgow and Honorary Fellow, Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge)

History

In May 1798, the earl of Kingston was tried before the Irish House of Lords for the murder of his cousin Colonel Henry Fitzgerald. The Earl had been enraged by Henry's seduction of his teenage daughter, Mary, and by their elopement.

The family was now at war in love and politics, for the Earl's other daughter, Margaret, had become a member of the republican United Irishmen fighting against British rule. The Earl of Kingston's trial came at a crucial moment in the conflict and would turn out to be the last great pageant in the independent Irish House of Lords. 1798 would see the fate of Ireland and the role of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy change for ever. In the Irish Rebellion 20,000 people would die, more than in the French Terror.

Janet Todd tells the extraordinary story of the Earl of Kingston's family who lived through and played a major part on one of the most traumatic periods in Ireland's history.