History Glossary

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Mac Neill, Eoin
born in Co Antrim in 1867, he was a founder member of the Gaelic League, a professor of history and commander-in-chief of the Irish Volunteers. He tried to stop the Easter Rising without telling the British. He was Minister for Education in the Irish Free State and died in 1945.

MacCurtain, Thomas
the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, and an IRA commandant, who was murdered (almost certainly by police) in 1920.

MacSwiney, Terence
he succeeded MacCurtain as Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork. He was imprisoned in Brixton prison, London, where he died on the 74th day of a hunger strike in 1920.

Markievicz, Countess
born Constance Gore-Booth in 1868, the daughter of a Sligo landed family, she married Count Casimir Markievicz. She ran a soup kitchen during the 1913 Dublin strike, formed the Fianna (republican boy scouts) in 1914, and was a Commandant of the Irish Citizen Army during the 1916 rebellion. She was the first woman ever elected to the House of Commons but (since she was a Sinn Féin MP) sat instead in Dáil Éireann. She opposed the 1921 Treaty and died in 1927.