On the day that a 700-year English presence in the south of Ireland ended with the formal hand over of Dublin Castle to the government of the Irish Free State, 16 January 1922, Lisburn celebrated the centenary of the local "hero of the Indian Mutiny", John Nicholson (1822–1857). Under a marble relief of his final assault on Delhi's Kashmir Gate, a memorial in the Cathedral credited Nicholson with dealing a "death blow to the greatest danger that ever threatened the British Empire". For James Craig, now the first prime minister of Northern Ireland, and for other dignitaries speaking at the unveiling of a new statue in Market Square, the East India Company Brigadier (depicted with both sword and gun in hand) was "a symbol of the defence of Empire in Ireland as well as India.