Raymond Hylton. Religio-political ferment in Dublin & Portarlington Huguenot communities, 1692-1720 by History Hub

'Religio-political ferment in, and interconnections between the Dublin and Portarlington Huguenot communities, 1692-1720: a study in causal determinism?' by Prof. Raymond Hylton (Virginia Union).

Dublin and Portarlington have long been acknowledged as the two most substantial Huguenot communities established and solidified in the wake of the Williamite reduction of Ireland. They have been primarily studied in isolation. But with only forty miles of mainly level ground separating them, neither can be completely understood without some accounting for interrelationship and interchange that occurred between them, and the cause-and-effect this often brought about. Pivotal to this story is the most influential Huguenot , Henri Massue De Ruvigny, Baron Portarlington, then Viscount, and Earl of Galway; and the military veterans who arrived with him from France. Not as thoroughly noted and studied by earlier sources, but incrementally significant players nonetheless, were the mercantile families and clerical-professional families, and individuals like Benjamin de Daillon, Isaac Dumont de Bostaquet, and Elie Bouhereau, who had a hand in the development of both French Protestant colonies. The story of these two communities, contrary to past representations stressing tranquility and commonality, is fraught with dissonance: grating religious sensibilities pitting dissenters against conformed Huguenots; migration and return migration; and self-questioning of their role within the larger context of their Anglophonic milieu, and late Stuart Ireland as a whole. The question thus arises as to whether or not, or to what extent, events and personalities within these two communities played upon one another.

The 6th Annual Tudor & Stuart Ireland Interdisciplinary Conference took place at NUI Galway in August, 2016. The conference was generously supported by: an NUI Galway President's Award for Research Excellence (awarded to Prof. Steven Ellis); the Moore Institute, NUI Galway; the Discipline of History, NUI Galway and the Society for Renaissance Studies.

As in previous years the majority of papers were recorded for podcasting by https://soundcloud.com/real-smart-media in association with www.historyhub.ie. There are now more than 140 podcasts from previous Tudor and Stuart Ireland conferences freely available. To access this archive go to www.historyhub.ie/podcasts or visit tudorstuartireland.com