Collected by government-appointed commissioners, the witness testimony runs to approximately 19,000 pages, and constitutes the chief evidence for the sharply contested allegation that the rebellion began with a general massacre of protestant settlers. As a result, this material has been central to a protracted and bitter historical dispute. This body of material, unparalleled elsewhere in early modern Europe, provides a unique source of information for the causes and events surrounding the 1641 rebellion and for the social, economic, cultural, religious, and political history of seventeenth-century Ireland, England and Scotland. In addition, the depositions vividly document various colonial and ‘civilizing’ processes, including the spread of Protestantism in one of the remotest regions of the Stuart kingdoms and the introduction of lowland agricultural and commercial practices, together with the native response to these developments. However, they are both difficult to access and to read, which has severely restricted their research potential.

Web site publication would give users access to all images and transcripts, with search options allowing free text search, while the database (described in the technical appendix) will facilitate more detailed projects in a variety of disciplines, and provide an ideal tool for use in the teaching environment, at both taught postgraduate and undergraduate levels. The transcripts and database will also provide the raw source material for further research. In addition, the transcriptions and database are also designed to be of interest to the general public, both for historical and genealogical purposes.

The 1641 Depositions Team
• Depositions Team - A collaborative initiative between Trinity College, Dublin (Aidan Clarke, Bernard Meehan, Jane Ohlmeyer, Micheal O’Siochrú); Aberdeen University (Tom Bartlett) and Cambridge University (John Morrill)
• Cost €1M - funded by Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS, Research Project Grants; €247k), Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, Resource Enhancement Scheme; €650k) and the Trinity College Dublin Library (€105k)
• Three postdoctoral researchers working for 3 years (Edda Frankhot, Elaine Murphy and Annaleigh Margey)
• Technical support (Brian Donovan of Eneclann Ltd)
• Susan Bioletti, Keeper of Preservation and Conservation, Trinity College Library
• Begins October 2007 for 3 years