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In late November 1623, John Donne, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, fell ill, probably of typhus, or ‘spotted fever’, as it was called in his day. He was in his early fifties, a widower since the death of his beloved wife Anne in 1617, and the father of four daughters and a son, who carried his father’s name.

When I was about midway through my second decade and starting to take an interest in poetry, I was one day leafing through an anthology of English poetry when my eye caught a poem called ‘The Lover Showeth How He is Forsaken of such as He Sometime Enjoyed’.

Some weeks ago I wrote that probably the greatest muster of the Irish Gaelic lords that ever gathered on a battlefield took their place on either side at Knockdoe, Co Galway, on August 19 1504. The O’Donnells and the O’Neills, from their great northern fiefdoms, fought for law and order on the side of the Earl of Kildare who successfully imposed the king’s rule on his rebellious and quarrelsome son-in-law the Earl of Clanricard, Ulick de Burgh (Burke) of Claregalway castle. Ulick’s marriage to Kildare’s daughter, and his disregard for her, gave the Earl a personal reason for the battle; but his allies were equally anxious to display their loyalty to King Henry VII, the undisputed king of England after the protracted and bloody Wars of the Roses.