‘next after God she has been the preservation of our hous’: Frances Talbot, countess of Tyrconnell and religious houses in Ireland, Flanders and France, 1677-1731

Speaker:  Dr Frances Nolan (IRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of History, Maynooth University) 

Synopsis: This paper examines the relationship between Frances Talbot, countess of Tyrconnell, and religious houses in Dubin, Ypres and Paris, from 1677 until her death in 1731. Born to an English Protestant gentry family, Lady Tyrconnell converted to Catholicism and was instrumental in the foundation of the Blue Nuns in 1670s Paris, the monastery of Gratia Dei in Dublin during James II’s reign, and the Poor Clare and Dominican communities on the north side of the Liffey in the early eighteenth century.