Couple married while groom was in exile
THE McSwiney couple met through mutual friends at Christmas 1915.
With Terence deeply immersed in his activities with the Irish Volunteers and his arrest in May 1916 after the Easter Rising, romance did not blossom immediately. However, Muriel because a support to him and others in the separatist movement during their stand-off with British authorities, during Easter Week at Cork’s Volunteer Hall and during Terence’s subsequent detention in England.
Terence’s sisters Mary and Annie were among the very small party at their brother’s wedding in St Joseph’s Church, Bromyard, Hertfordshire, the day after Muriel’s 25th birthday. Her mother, a member of a prominent Cork distillery family, disapproved of the match and none of Muriel’s family were present.
MacSwiney had been forced to live in and remain within a five-mile radius of the village since late 1917 after he and others including Cork’s future first Republican Lord Mayor Tomás MacCurtain has been deported for their continuing Irish Volunteer activities.
The best man was Richard Mulcahy, who would become the Irish Volunteers’ Chief of Staff in 1918 and later on commander-in-chief of the National Army after Michael Collins was killed at Béal na Bláth.
The wedding was conducted in Irish by the Capuchin friar Fr Augustine Hayden who had ministered to the wounded and dying during the Easter Rising in Dublin the previous year and was with Con Colbert in the hours before his execution in May 1916.
After the murder of Tómas MacCurtain, the then Lord Mayor of Cork in March 1920, MacSwiney was subsequently elected to the position. He was arrested the following August for possession of ‘seditious’ materials and a cipher key.
Tried by court martial, he was sentenced to two-years’ imprisonment in Brixton Prison and immediately went on hunger strike, an action that garnered worldwide attention.
He died on October 20 after 73-days on hunger strike. His body was brought home for burial and his funeral on November 1 attracted huge crowds.
Terence MacSwiney was buried beside his friend Tómas MacCurtain at the Republican plot in St Finbarr’s Cemetery.