Place:County Louth, Republic of Ireland

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NameCounty Louth
Alt namessource: logainm.ie (Irish)
Contae Lúsource: logainm.ie (Irish)
Louthsource: logainm.ie and Getty Vocabulary Program (English)
Co. Louth
Lughbdhaidhsource: Canby, Historic Places (1984) I, 533
source: Encyclopædia Britannica (1988) VII, 513
TypeCounty
Coordinates53.917°N 6.5°W
Located inRepublic of Ireland     (1922 - )
Also located inIreland     ( - 1922)
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog


the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

County Louth is a coastal county in the Eastern and Midland Region of Ireland, within the province of Leinster. Louth is bordered by the counties of Meath to the south, Monaghan to the west, Armagh to the north and Down to the north-east, across Carlingford Lough. It is the smallest county in Ireland by land area and the 18th most populous, with just over 128,000 residents as of 2016.[1] The county is named after the village of Louth. Louth County Council is the local authority for the county.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

County Louth is named after the village of Louth, which in turn is named after Lugh, a god of the ancient Irish. Historically, the placename has had various spellings; , , and (see Historic Names List, for full listing). is the modern simplified spelling.

The county is steeped in myth, legend and history, and is a setting in the epic. Later it saw the influence of the Vikings, as seen in the name of Carlingford Lough. They also established a longphort at Annagassan in the ninth century. At this time Louth consisted of three sub-kingdoms, each subject to separate over-kingdoms: ; ; and, the . The whole area became part of the O'Carroll Kingdom of (Oriel) early in the 12th century under . At the same time, the area was removed from the diocese of Armagh and the episcopal see of the Diocese of Airgíalla or Clogher was transferred to Louth .

A number of historic sites are in the county, including religious sites at Monasterboice, Mellifont Abbey and the St Mary Magdalene Dominican Friary.

The Normans occupied the Louth area in the 1180s, forming the County of Oriel (Uriel or Vriell) out of the O'Carroll kingdom. At this time the western boundary of occupation was unfixed and Monaghan was still considered part of Oriel. However, over time, Louth became differentiated as 'English' Oriel, to distinguish it from the remainder ('Irish' Oriel), outside the control of the Norman colony, which had passed into the hands of the McMahon lordship of .

In the early 14th century Edward Bruce made claim to the High Kingship of Ireland and led an expeditionary force to Ireland. The Scottish army was repulsed from Drogheda but laid waste to much of the Anglo-Norman colony of Ireland including Ardee and Dundalk. Edward was crowned on the hill of Maledon near Dundalk on 2 May 1316. His army was finally defeated and Edward killed in the Battle of Faughart near Dundalk, by a chiefly local force led by John de Bermingham. He was created 1st Earl of Louth and granted estates at Ardee on 12 May 1319 as a reward for his services to the Crown in defeating the Scots. De Bermingham was subsequently killed in the Braganstown massacre on 13 June 1329 along with some 200 members of his family and household, in a feud between the Anglo-Irish families of Louth.

One of the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1465 (5 Ed. IV, 3) stated "That every Irishman that dwell betwixt or amongst Englishmen in the County of Dublin, Myeth, Vriell [i.e. Oriel], and Kildare ... shall take to him an English surname of one town, as Sutton, Chester, Trym, Skryne, Corke, Kinsale; or colour, as white, blacke, browne; or arte or science, as smith or carpenter; or office, as cooke, butler ...". This was an attempt to compel Irish families in the Pale, including Louth, to adopt English surnames.

In 1189, a royal charter was granted to Dundalk after a Norman nobleman named Bertram de Verdun erected a manor house at Castletown Mount. Bertram's granddaughter Roesia de Verdun later built Castle Roche in 1236. In 1412, a royal charter was granted to Drogheda which unified the towns of Drogheda-in-Meath and Drogheda-in-Uriel (Louth) as a County in its own right, styled as ‘the County of the town of Drogheda’. Drogheda continued as a County Borough until the setting up of County Councils, through the enactment of the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898, which saw all of Drogheda, including a large area south of the River Boyne, become part of an extended County Louth.[2]

Until the late 16th century, 1596, Louth was considered part of Ulster, before becoming part of Leinster after a conference held at Faughart between the Chiefs of Ulster (Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone and Hugh Roe O'Donnell), on the Irish side, and the Ulster-born Miler Magrath, Anglican Archbishop of Cashel, and Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond on that of the English. The lands of Ballymascanlan, part of the former estates of Mellifont Abbey, were transferred from Armagh to Louth .

The 16th and 17th centuries featured many skirmishes and battles involving Irish and English forces, as Louth was on the main route to 'the Moiry Pass' and the Ulster areas often in rebellion and as yet uncolonised. Oliver Cromwell attacked Drogheda in 1649 slaughtering the Royalist garrison and hundreds of the town's citizens. Towards the end of the same century, the armies of the warring Kings, James II and William (III) of Orange, faced off in south Louth during the build-up to the Battle of the Boyne; the battle was fought west from Drogheda. Drogheda held for James under Lord Iveagh, but surrendered to William the day after the battle of the Boyne.

In 1798, the leaders of the United Irishmen included Bartholomew Teeling, John Byrne, and Patrick Byrne, all from Castletown; Anthony Marmion from Louth Town and Dundalk, Anthony McCann from Corderry; Nicholas and Thomas Markey from Barmeath, and Arthur McKeown, John Warren, and James McAllister from Cambricville. They were betrayed by informers, notably a Dr. Conlan, who came from Dundalk, and an agent provocateur called Sam Turner, from Newry. Several leaders were hanged.

The Burning of Wildgoose Lodge took place on the night of 29–30 October 1816, for which 18 men were executed.

The priest and scientist Nicholas Callan (1799–1864), inventor of the first induction coil, was from Darver.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article County Louth. especially the section "Geography and political subdivisions" and its subsection "Towns and villages"

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This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at County Louth. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.