Galway

Galway stands at the mouth of the River Corrib, where the waters of Lough Corrib reach Galway Bay. Behind its walls grew a port that looked both toward the Gaelic lands of the west and across the Atlantic approaches to continental Europe. Its merchants traded fish, wool and hides, and ships carried their goods to France and Spain. Fourteen leading families came to dominate the town's government and commerce, their influence giving rise to the name by which they became known: the Tribes of Galway.

The town's wealth rested on these connections, but its politics and religion became entangled in the wars of the seventeenth century. Galway joined the Catholic Confederation during the Irish wars of the 1640s. Cromwellian forces besieged the town from 1651 until its surrender in 1652; plague and the expulsion of Catholic inhabitants followed. In the Williamite war Galway again supported the losing side, surrendering to Williamite forces in 1691. Its walls and merchant houses preserved the shape of an earlier prosperity through these upheavals.