A meeting of the Co Roscommon Historical and Archaeological Society will take place on Tuesday, June 9th in the Rathcroghan Visitor Centre, Tulsk. Following at 8.30 pm a lecture entitled ‘From Jacobites to Brunswickers, The O’Kelly, Lords of the Manor of Screen’, will be given by Paul Connolly. Paul is an engineer with Galway County Council, a native of Cloonakilleg, Mt Talbot and is now living in Ballyglunin. He is an avid contributor to the websites Mt Talbot through the Ages and The Landed Estates of Co Roscommon.
In the lecture he will examine the powerful O’Kelly family of Skrine, near Athleague and Aughrane near Ballygar. This family fought with Mountjoy at Kinsale, fought against the Parliamentarians in the Cromwellian War, fought in the armies of James ll in the Williamite War, with Jacobite officer Col. Charles O’ Kelly writing the only account of the war from the Irish combatants perspective in the work Macariae Excidium, or the Destruction of Cyprus. He will follow the family from here with involvement in the Attenbury Plot in London, then into France and finally with Denis Henry Kelly of Aughrane who was a self proclaimed Orangeman and Tory. Denis also headed up the Brunswick Club in Dublin in the run up to Catholic Emancipation, moving to Dublin for a year to try and prevent the passing of the legislation. All welcome to this lecture.
