bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Securing the Protestant interest: the origins and purpose of the penal laws of 1695
Authors: McGrath Charles Ivar
Published: August 2016

The origin and the purpose of the Irish penal laws have always been subjects of contention. These laws have often been viewed as a ‘rag-bag’ of legislation, lacking in government policy, without precedent or forethought, motivated by rapacity, unfavoured in England and yet tolerated in return for concessions by an Irish parliament greedy for Catholic land and wealth. However, in the context of the first two Irish penal laws of 1695, and most specifically the disarming act, this generality does not hold good. It is the aim of this article to show that the two penal laws of 1695, for disarming Catholics and prohibiting foreign education, were the result of a definite policy which existed in Ireland from the time of the Williamite war. This policy was built upon a previous tradition of English statutes and Irish proclamations. The pressure for this policy came not only from Irish Protestants, but also from English ministers and from the crown. And the prime motive was security of the Protestant interest.

Victory at Limerick in October 1691 did not end the threat to the Williamite Protestant interest in Ireland. Fear of Catholic Europe remained constant as long as William III was at war with France, a fear that was heightened by the activities of privateers and rapparees. In the search for greater security, a policy developed for disarming Irish Catholics, which was actively supported by William III and his executive and legislature in England, was implemented by the executive in Ireland, and was encouraged and promoted by the Irish Protestant interest.
Yanaihara Tadao and the Irish question: a comparative analysis of the Irish and Korean questions, 1919–36
Authors: Townsend Susan C.
Published: August 2016

Irish nationalism and the success of Sinn Féin in acquiring dominion status for the Irish Free State in 1921–2 had a profound influence upon many nationalist movements in Asia in the 1920s and 1930s. Although the Irish example was of greatest significance for the shaping of political organisations and guerrilla warfare, it was also valuable in inspiring broader academic analyses of the consequences of colonial rule. In 1927 and again in 1936 Professor Yanaihara Tadao of Tokyo Imperial University published an essay on the Airurando mondai or Irish question entitled ‘Airurando mondai no enkaku’ (‘The history of the Irish question’). The main purpose of the essay was to compare Britain’s Irish question with Japan’s Chôsen mondai or Korean question, and it not only provides us with a unique Japanese perspective on Irish history but reminds us of the importance of the Irish example in Asia.

Yanaihara Tadao (1893–1961) is even today much respected in Japan for his resistance to militarism and his sympathy for colonial peoples in the 1930s. In 1910, shortly before his eighteenth birthday, he was touched by the plight of the Korean people under Japanese rule as a result of reading Frederick Arthur McKenzie’s The tragedy of Corea. McKenzie’s tirade against Japanese atrocities in Korea both during and after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 caused Yanaihara ‘to consider the truth of colonial policy’. At this time Yanaihara had just been admitted to the First Higher School, a preparatory college for entry to Tokyo Imperial University, and the years spent at the school proved to be his most formative.
The politics of reaction: the dynamics of treatyite government and policy, 1922–33
Authors: Regan John M.
Published: August 2016

On 3 July 1944 William T. Cosgrave, the former President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, wrote to his friend and former colleague, Professor Michael Hayes, reflecting on his life in politics. The occasion was Cosgrave’s retirement as leader of the Fine Gael party.

I find this break a painful operation in many respects. Even were my physique equal to the Dáil and political work it seems this slip should have been inevitable ... But we must be candid — in the sphere that one considered the least important but which was the most important we failed — viz to retain popular support. It should not and I believe it is not beyond the capacity of able men to discover a way to the people’s confidence and having found it to keep it.

The letter remains a lachrymose valediction to a political career which witnessed Cosgrave’s rise from Dublin municipal politics to the leadership of the first independent Irish government. Cosgrave presided over the first decade of independence. Governments under his leadership fought and won the Civil War which was waged against the implementation of the 1921 Anglo-Irish treaty. In the process they created a stable polity which integrated its internal opponents with remarkable success. Within nine years of defeating the anti-treaty forces in the Civil War Cosgrave’s last government was able to pass power peacefully to its former adversaries in the guise, by 1932, of the Fianna Fail party under the leadership of Eamon de Valera.
The Irish adventurers and the English civil war
Authors: MacCormack J.R.
Published: August 2016

When the Irish rebellion broke out in October 1641, Charles I was in Scotland, where, closely watched by agents of his dissident English parliament, he was attempting, by a policy of tardy retreats and unwonted largesse, to make of the Scottish kirk a pillar of the throne, and to transform wily old enemies like Argyle, Hamilton and Leslie into trusty retainers. Accordingly, when the Scottish estates—then in close liason with Westminster—suggested that the English parliament be entrusted with the management of the Irish war, Charles quickly agreed and sent a message to that effect to London.

In the house of commons, on November 1, the radicals, aware that Ireland formed a common focus of interest for the Scots, the London merchants and many of their supporters in the house, received the news of the rising with ‘smooth brows’. The well-known London interest in Ulster had long been shared by the Scots who had, indeed, attempted to supplant the Londoners in 1638. Hamilton himself appears to have fancied himself as Strafford’s successor.
The rise of a catholic middle class in eighteenth-century Ireland
Authors: Wall Maureen
Published: August 2016

Historians of eighteenth-century Ireland agree in stating that catholics succeeded in amassing considerable wealth in trade, in spite of, or even because of, the popery laws, but little effort has been made to examine this question in detail.

What percentage of the principal merchants and traders of Ireland belonged to the catholic faith, or what percentage of the trade of Ireland was in their hands during the century? It is doubtful whether these questions will ever be answered completely. Contemporary travel books, and even contemporary local histories such as those of Charles Smith, scarcely mention trade, and contribute not at all to solving our particular problem. Local histories of more modern date concentrate on political rather than on economic history; and although it is to be hoped that local historians and genealogists will fill in some of the gaps, from family papers, from local newspapers and other available sources, the general historian investigating the problem has at present no regional or local studies to assist him in his researches. He must therefore try to piece together such scraps of information as are available and endeavour to arrive at some general conclusions.
Delinquency among Irish catholic children in Victorian London
Authors: Feheney J.M.
Published: August 2016

The growth of interest in urban studies in recent years had induced scholars to take a new interest in Irish immigrants to Britain during the nineteenth century. The Irish encountered most of the problems of immigrants and were the subject of much comment from contemporary English writers. Moreover, since they constituted a small but homogeneous minority, easily discernible in the larger community, they can be conveniently studied in depth. The purpose of this article is not, however, to do this so much as to enter a few caveats for anyone thinking of specialising in one facet of Irish immigration to Britain, namely, juvenile deliquency. The subject of delinquency among Irish children in Britain, which has intrigued Englishmen for at least 150 years, has taken on new importance in recent times, partly as a result of the revival of an old allegation that there is a connexion between Catholicism and crime. Formerly, the assertion was made by ultra-protestants, especially Recordite evangelicals. Now it is being made by some English Roman Catholic priests. While this article will not deal conclusively with the overall question of a connexion between Catholicism and crime, it is intended to argue that, at least as far as Irish immigrant catholics in nineteenth-century London were concerned, such a connexion could not reasonably be said to exist. In the course of doing so, it will contend that, even granting that the Irish were a police problem as distinct from a crime control problem, there is, nevertheless, evidence of police prejudice against them. It also aims to show that destitution and vagrancy were common among London’s juvenile poor, especially the Irish, and that destitute juveniles were frequently classified as delinquent juveniles and treated accordingly. Finally it will put forward evidence to suggest that some English protestant philanthropists, including some evangelicals, have through over-generalisation, and perhaps unwittingly, caricatured the London Irish.
Historiographical debate: Representations of the past in Ireland: whose past and whose present?
Authors: Ellis Steven G.
Published: August 2016

In modern history there are few countries which present the historian with the kind of interpretative challenge offered by Ireland. The general outlines of the problem are well known—the impact on the island of successive waves of colonisation; the endemic unrest, religious strife, and political instability, exemplified in recent times by the partition of the island between two states; and the interaction and conflict since the middle ages of two cultures and two peoples, Gaelic and English. These salient features of Irish history raise the question of an appropriate historiographical framework within which the island’s history might be interpreted—if we accept that Ireland’s historical experience cannot be understood in isolation. In an article published in this journal three years ago, I outlined an alternative perspective on the history of late medieval Ireland which, it seemed to me, also held possibilities for other periods of Irish history. In the course of the discussion, the article also urged the modification or replacement of particular terms and concepts which have traditionally been used by historians but which, I argued, are an obstacle to a more balanced, pluralistic understanding of Ireland’s past. The article has since attracted a reply by Dr Brendan Bradshaw, on which the journal’s editors have kindly allowed me to comment.
The making of a penal law (2 Anne, c.6), 1703–4
Authors: Simms J.G.
Published: August 2016

The act of 1704 ‘to prevent the further gronth of popery’ was, in Lecky's words, the most notorious of the penal laws. It was also the most comprehensive. It covered changes of religion, the purchase and inheritance of land, education, guardianship, employment, voting and pilgrimages. It was from the first regarded as an important and highly controversial measure. There was a great deal of argument about it, and its form changed remarkably during the protracted proceedings that took place before it passed into law. Catholics opposed it strenuously at various points in the legislative process. The introduction, at a late stage, of the sacramental test hit dissenters and produced further controversv. There were a number of unusual features in the treatment of the bill which repay investigation of the considerable volume of material relating to it. There are also gaps in the evidence which make it difficult to be certain about such questions as the attitude of the English government of the day to penal legislation in Ireland. It is particularly hard to determine why, and by whom, the sacramental test was introduced into the bill.
Parnell's fall and the nonconformist conscience
Authors: Glaser J.F.
Published: August 2016

The fall of Charles Stewart Parnell as a result of the O'Shea divorce case in late 1890 is a dramatic episode of lasting human interest and an event of the first importance in the history of Ireland and of British politics. The story of the crisis has often been told, usually from the perspectives of the two Homeric protagonists, Parnell and Gladstone. While it is generally agreed that the English nonconformists played a decisive part in the dethronement of ‘the uncrowned king of Ireland’, their catalytic role has never been clearly, accurately, or fully explained. The problem is of special interest because it was during this controversy that ‘the nonconformist conscience’ entered the English language as a popular phrase as it had long before entered English politics as a potent reality. It is the purpose of this article to study the Parnell affair from the vantage point of English nonconformity and, in so doing, to re-examine the origin of the famous phrase and to throw light on the relationship of nonconformity and the liberal party in a critical phase of the home rule movement.
Notes on some agricultural units of measurement in use in pre-famine Ireland
Authors: Bourke P. M. Austin
Published: August 2016

By no means the least of the obstacles which hinder a quantitative analysis of Irish agriculture prior to 1847 is the chaotic state of weights and measures. Successive statutes had been introduced in an effort to secure uniformity, but had little effect even in official quarters. Thus, although 5 Geo. IV c. 74 set up, as from 5 January 1826, the ‘imperial standard’ as the only standard measure of distance, area, volume and capacity, the Irish Post Office continued to use the Irish mile in its cancellations at least up to 1856, and used the same unit in its published list of distances. Variations in the stone, hundredweight and ton, together with non-standard grain measures, were declared illegal in Ireland as from I July 1835, but practice again lagged far behind the law.

In the absence of any comprehensive survey of the actual state of weights and measures in Ireland in the first half of the nineteenth century, historians dealing with the period have tended to bypass the problem at the expense of ambiguity and inaccuracy.
The wealth of the greater Irish landowners, 1750-1815
Authors: Large David
Published: August 2016

My prime concern in approaching this subject was to discover, if possible, some precise facts about the finances of the landowning class in what is generally accounted to have been their years of greatest affluence. This article is in effect a report on such sources of information as it was possible to explore together with tentative answers to some of the questions that appeared to need raising if the economic condition of the ascendancy landowners is to be understood. That a great deal of further investigation is required to attain this end was the plainest conclusion reached and if what follows in any way aids such inquiry, its purpose will have been fulfilled.
Eighteenth-Century Ireland
Authors: Butterfield Herbert
Published: August 2016

Those who wish to put together the complete picture and story of eighteenth-century Ireland, in so far as these have been assembled in the literature of the last thirty years, will need to study many writings that lie on the periphery of the subject, or at least outside the main historiographical tradition. The scholarship seems to exist in separate layers which sometimes touch one another without quite interpenetrating; and a man may make a genuine contribution in his own field but still require to be read with a special critical alertness because he is unaware of what is happening in other fields. Important items may appear in periodicals not regularly consulted by historians.
Irish-American nationalism
Authors: Moody T.W.
Published: August 2016

During the four decades that followed the great famine, over three million people born in Ireland emigrated to the U.S.A. In the seventies and eighties these Irish-Americans and their descendants played a distinct role in Irish politics. The period was a critical era in the history of Ireland. It was marked by the beginnings of Gladstone’s ‘mission to pacify Ireland’ and of the home-rule movement under Butt; by the ‘land war’ of 1879–82, when the tenant farmers, under the leadership of Parnell and Davitt, offered a successful massresistance to the landlords; by the unchallenged ascendancy of Parnell and his party in national politics for the next eight years; and by the transformation of the conditions of the Anglo-Irish conflict through the conversion of Gladstone and the British liberal party to home rule.
The American Committee for Irish Studies
Authors: McCaffrey Lawrence J.
Published: August 2016

When the American Historical Association met in Washington, D.C., in December 1958, Thomas N. Brown, Gilbert Cahill, Emmet Larkin, and I discussed the difficulty of initiating and maintaining contacts between the relatively small number of people working in Irish history scattered over the United States and Canada. We decided that an American committee for Irish historical studies might help solve these problems of numbers and distance and encourage research and writing in Irish history.
XXVII Ireland and Party Politics, 1885–7 : an unpublished Conservative Memoir (II)
Authors: Cook A. B. , Vincent J. R.
Published: August 2016

Thus ended Lord Salisbury’s first administration. The division was followed by an impromptu supper of about a hundred M.P.s at the Carlton Club. I sat beside Lord Randolph who was in high spirits. He told me that there had been a similar gathering on the night Gladstone was defeated in the previous June and he hoped we should soon have another.

The house adjourned to enable the new ministers to be re-elected; and I spent the interval in Ireland. As I did not share Lord Randolph’s sanguine view of the situation, I thought it prudent to be prepared for years spent in the cool shade of opposition. & We gave up our horses and coachman, and put an end to all unnecessary personal expenditure.
XXVII Ireland and party politics, 1885–7 : an unpublished Conservative memoir (III)
Authors: Cooke A. B. , Vincent J. R.
Published: August 2016

Gladstonian apologists have effectively distorted the intentions of the conservative government during the period 1885-7 in which Holmes was a member of it. Carnarvon’s unofficial meeting with Parnell, and Conservative ambiguity over the need for a new crimes act, provided two easy handles for criticism which could be used without any knowledge of the inner workings of the ministry of 1885-6. Holmes’s memoir is therefore of value in showing that there was a distinctly conservative policy on Ireland, a policy which in intention if not in performance stands up well to examination in conservative (or liberal) terms. It is certainly made clear that conservative policy, where liberal, did not reflect only the stereotyped opportunism of habitual weakness: and that, in cases where a reactionary policy prevailed, this cannot be taken as evidence of an ultimately reactionary disposition towards Ireland within the cabinet. Further, the very obvious hesitancy and equivocation of the cabinet on Irish matters turns out to hinge on opposition of personalities who were in underlying agreement, rather than on differences of principle or on any real attempt or desire to manoeuvre astutely.
The Hartlib circle and the origins of the Dublin Philosophical Society
Authors: Barnard T.C.
Published: August 2016

Recently Mr Charles Webster has urged a less restrictive view of seventeenth-century scientific development, allotting a more important role to Samuel Hartlib and his circle. An examination of scientific activity in Ireland during the interregnum offers support for Dr Webster’s argument. This article will attempt to add to what is known of Hartlib, his friends and their interests by considering their activities in Ireland. Relating those activities to the gradual diffusion of experimental science in seventeenthcentury Ireland produces a picture rather different from that offered by Dr K. T. Hoppen in his study of the Dublin Philosophical Society’s origin.
XXXI ‘What Mr Redmond thought’: An unpublished interview with John Redmond, December 1906
Authors: Baylen J.O.
Published: August 2016

In October 1912, Alfred Stead, who had succeeded his father, the veteran journalist, W. T. Stead, as editor of the Review of Reviews, after the elder Stead’s death on the Titanic during the preceding April, found Stead’s memorandum of his interview with John Redmond, in December 1906, among his father’s papers. In view of the current crisis of the Irish home rule bill, Alfred Stead planned to publish the memorandum under the title ‘What Mr Redmond thought : special interview by Mr W. T. Stead’ in the November issue of the Review of Reviews, and on 7 October, posted page proof of the interview to Redmond with a note requesting Redmond to inform him ‘whether there are any points which are not in accord with … [his] … remembrance of this interview’.
Cardinal Cullen and Irish nationality
Authors: Steele E. D.
Published: August 2016

Paul Cullen (1803-78) became archbishop of Armagh in 1849, after long service as rector of the Irish College in Rome, returned to Ireland the following vear, was translated to Dublin in 1852 and created cardinal in 1866. The picture of Cardinal Cullen as a prelate whose brand of ultramontanism made him an inveterate opponent of Irish nationalism, both constitutional and revolutionary, ought not to have survived the work of Monsignor Corish, Fr Mac-Suibhne and Dr John Whyte. In fact, this caricature has been perpetuated by such established historians as Professor Dudley Edwards, Dr F. S. L. Lyons and others. They continue to reproduce the hostile view which several generations of nationalist writers have taken of Cullen’s actions and motives in Irish politics. Take the charge that in the 1850s he tried to put an end to the clerical participation in politics which had been so important in the national movement. ‘Archbishop Cullen of Dublin attempted to withdraw the clergy completely from politics’ —thus Professor Edwards in A new history of Ireland (1972), writing as if Dr MThyte had never examined this question with the compulsive impartiality typical of him.
The unknown chief secretary: H. E. Duke and Ireland, 1916-18
Authors: Boyce D. G. , Hazlehurst Cameron
Published: August 2016

Henry Edward Duke, 1st Lord Merrivale, is one of the forgotten men of Anglo-Irish relations. Duke’s chief secretaryship of Ireland has been eclipsed by that of his tragic predecessor, Augustine Birrell; and he has generally been regarded as a mere caretaker, a stop-gap chief secretary, who, in the words of The Times obituarist, showed neither ‘imagination’ nor ‘breadth of view’, and had ‘no appreciation of the Irish psychology’. If he is remembered at all, it is for his lapsus linguae at the opening of the Irish convention on 25 July 1917 when he declared, to an astonished audience, ‘Gentlemen, one thing I have learned in the course of my experience, never despair of the republic’.
The Irish customs administration in the sixteenth century
Authors: Treadwell Victor
Published: August 2016

The regulation and taxation of Irish trade under the Tudors have strong but neglected claims on the attention of the Irish historian. Their obvious relevance to the economic activities of the country and, in particular, its seaborne trade will only incidentally be discussed here. Dr Longfield’s pioneer account of Anglo-Irish trade has at length been followed up by more systematic explorations of her chief sources, the English and Welsh port books and customs accounts, and a definitive treatment of this sector is surely not far distant. Even here, however, where an enviable amount of solid information is available—despite their incompleteness and familiar problems of interpreting the port books—no one seems to have asked why Irish historians have to use non-Irish sources.
The I.R.B. and the beginnings of the Gaelic Athletic Association
Authors: Mandle W. F.
Published: August 2016

The G.A.A. was founded as a consequence of an article, ‘A word about Irish athletics’, that appeared in United Ireland on 11 October 1884. The writer, almost certainly Michael Cusack, a Dublin teacher, bewailed the fact that traditional Irish games had been abandoned because of English rule : ‘the hated and hitherto dominant race drove the Irish people from their trysting places at the cross-roads and hurling-fields back to their cabins’; the Irish had become effete, pursuing fripperies and fashion, or, if they still practised athletics, did so under the control of an alien English Amateur Athletic Association where the main objective was to degrade the Irish by forcing them to compete in, and be defeated at, sports unfamiliar to them. The remedy was for ‘the Irish people to take the management of their games into their own hands’.
Irish unionism and the Russellite threat, 1894-1906
Authors: Jackson Alvin
Published: August 2016

Whether as a unionist, or as an independent, T W Russell was never taken lightly by the parliamentary representatives of late Victorian unionism: directly, and obliquely, his contribution to the evolution of their movement was immense. As a popular unionist missionary in Britain between the first two home-rule bills, and as a protégé of Joseph Chamberlain, Russell was a valuable medium of communication between the British and Irish unionist parties. Moreover, he was both a champion of unionist farmer demands and a loyalist member of parliament; so Russell also created a vital bond between Irish unionism and rural opinion. As a member of the parliamentary Ulster party, Russell worked unstintingly for its success, provoking flexibility among both the more obtuse landed elements in the commons and among radical farmers in the counties. Yet, when he left unionism, his influence (now indirect) remained. Confronted by the spectre of presbyterian farmer militancy led by Russell, Irish unionist members of parliament meekly tailored their public pledges; and when, between 1900 and 1902, his agitation peaked, these members went further, revising the structure of their party in order to deflate his criticism and restore old loyalties. As one of the most significant forces in moulding twentieth-century unionism from nineteenth-century toryism, Russell merits special attention: his relationship with the unionist leadership in the strategically crucial years between 1894 and 1906 is examined here at length.
Historical revision XXII: John White (c. 1756-1832), surgeon-general of New South Wales: biographical notes on his Irish origins
Authors: Nelson E. Charles
Published: August 2016

John White was appointed chief surgeon to the First Fleet on 24 October 1786 and sailed with that fleet, aboard theCharlotte, on 13 May 1787 for Botany Bay on the eastern seaboard of New Holland (Australia) where a penal colony was to be established. Between 18 and 20 January 1788 the entire fleet arrived at its destination and thus began the settlement of Australia by Europeans. White served as surgeon-general of the new colony, New South Wales, for almost six years until 17 December 1794 when he sailed on theDaedalusfor Europe, never to return to Australia.
Why was Ormond dismissed in 1669?
Authors: McGuire J.I.
Published: August 2016

On 14 February 1669 Charles II informed the committee of foreign affairs that he intended to remove the duke of Ormond from the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland. This announcement ended eighteen months of intrigue, speculation and rumour, and Orinond’s second period in office as viceroy. It seemed to contemporaries that the fickle king had again yielded to the pressure and importunities of his ambitious and politically ascendant courtiers. On hearing the news of Ormond’s dismissal Pepys commented that it showed ‘the power of Buckingham and the poor spirit of the king’. Few of Pepys’s contemporaries would have quarrelled with that judgment and few historians have seriously questioned it since.
Northern Ireland as a problem in the economic war 1932–1938
Authors: Johnson D.S.
Published: August 2016

In an article published in 1970 Professor Harkness has examined in some detail the negotiations between Britain and the Irish Free State during the economic war, particularly as they affected the relationships of Britain and the Commonwealth. This article discusses an aspect of the dispute not covered in his paper, the part Northern Ireland played in the quarrel, and in particular its role in making a final settlement more difficult. It also examines how the economic war affected relations between Britain and the province.

Although in the end the dispute proved, at least to Malcolm Macdonald’s satisfaction, that ‘the difficulty between North and South still lies at the root of the Anglo-Irish problem’, this was not evident when it began. In 1932, at the outbreak of the war, the question of partition did not arise. As Professor Mansergh has pointed out ‘the coin of contemporary political controversy in Ireland’ concerned the oath of allegiance, the position of the Governor-General, the question ofthe treaty ports and even the right of Ireland to secede from the Commonwealth.
The origins of the act of union: an examination of unionist opinion in Britain and Ireland, 1650-1800
Authors: Kelly James
Published: August 2016

It has long become commonplace to observe that the act of union of 1800, which abolished the Irish parliament and established the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, has since its enactment exerted a formative influence on Irish history and remained the dominant issue in Anglo-Irish relations. In view of this, it is surprising that so little notice has been afforded the development of unionist sentiment in Britain and Ireland in the century and a half to 1800, and that the origins of and background to the union have received such cursory attention. There is, of course, an obvious historical and historiographical reason for this. Generations of Irish nationalists, and all too frequently their historians, have perceived the union as a malign termination of the constitutional arrangement known grandly but misleadingly as Grattan’s parliament and, consequently, have been little interested in investigating or understanding its origins.
The catholics of the towns and the quarterage dispute in eighteenth-century Ireland
Authors: MacGeehin Maureen
Published: August 2016

Writers on eighteenth-century Ireland frequently refer to a levy called quarterage, and explain it as a special tax which the corporations exacted from catholic merchants, traders and craftsmen during the period of the penal laws.

George Unwin, in his Gilds and companies of London, speaks of quarterage as a sort of medieval insurance. When the quarterly subscription was 3d. the societies offered 14d. a week to ‘sick or unfortunate members’. The money derived from quarterage was used also in other ways. Provision was sometimes made by guilds for schools. Cesses were levied on them from time to time for the defence of their cities, provision of fire engines, etc., and much money was spent in maintaining a guild-hall, paying salaries of officials and on entertainment.
Williamite peace tactics, 1690-1
Authors: Simms J.G.
Published: August 2016

William III’s policy for ending the Irish war went through many changes during the fifteen months between the battle of the Boyne and the surrender of Limerick. With the varying fortunes of the war it oscillated between unconditional surrender and the securing of a negotiated settlement by the grant of liberal terms. William regarded the Irish war as an exasperating sideshow which diverted his forces from the real scene of action in the Netherlands, where he and his allies were hard put to it to withstand the pressure of the French. From the beginning of his reign his policy had been to induce the Irish Jacobites to surrender upon terms, and it was with the greatest reluctance that he decided in the spring of 1690 that he must himself go to Ireland and fight the matter out.
Anglo-Norman Relations with Connacht, 1169-1224
Authors: Dudley Edwards R.
Published: August 2016

Historians generally have accepted the view that the Irish kingdom of Connacht maintained an independent political existence until the death of Cathal Crovderg (1224). From the time of Henry II, however, individual Anglo-Norman adventurers cast envious glances at the broad lands ruled over by the house of O'Connor, and on more than one occasion in this period it seemed as if the foreigner would secure complete control of the province. An attempt will here be made to describe the successive endeavours to wrest their kingly power from the O'Connors before the death of Crovderg, and the circumstances which brought these to nothing.
The Scotch-Irish and the coming of the revolution in North Carolina
Authors: Green E. R. R.
Published: August 2016

It is difficult to discuss the influence of any national stock on American history without being involved in the larger question of which is the more important, environment or heredity. Naturally, to the American historian, environment is all important, and in the concept of the frontier developed by F. J Turner and others, the pioneer was wholly a child of the American continent. This view of the pioneer, however, originates less in history than in the eighteenth-century idea of a natural man. The real frontiersman was himself an immigrant or the child of immigrant parents, practising a European religion, and attempting to realize European ideals in a new country.

The Scotch-Irish were the dominant strain in the frontier population in all the colonies south of New York. Emigration from Ulster was as much a feature of American history in the eighteenth century as Irish catholic emigration in the next and had a much greater effect on the development of the country. From 1718, they had poured into America, mainly through Philadelphia, at the rate of about 4,000 a year. From there they made their way to the frontier and then down the lateral valleys of the Appalachians into the Valley of Virginia and piedmont North and South Carolina.
Historical Criticism of the Life Hugh Roe O'Donnell
Authors: Walsh Paul
Published: August 2016

In the ‘ Testimonium ’ prefixed to the ‘ Annals of the Four Masters ’, and signed by four Franciscan friars, the chief of whom was Bernardine O'Clery, guardian of the convent of Donegal in 1636, there is an enumeration of the principal sources from which the latter portion of the annals was compiled. The last-mentioned of these sources was the ‘ Book of Lughaidh Ó Clérigh ’, which the friars say covered the period 1586–1602. This book, we are to infer from the notice, was written in the form of annals. The other sources referred to are described in such a way as to show that they too were written in annalistic form.

The ‘ Book of Lughaidh Ó Clérigh ’, unlike some others utilized on the same occasion, has come down to us. It is now known as the ‘ Life of Hugh Roe O'Donnell ’, though that title does not appear in the sole authoritative manuscript. Indeed, the form of annals is preserved throughout, though it is not emphasized in the edition published by Denis Murphy in 1893.
IX. The Irish Parliamentary Party and the Liberals in Mid-Ulster, 1894
Authors: Lyons F S. L.
Published: August 2016

The letter that follows was written by Edward Blake, a member of the committee of the Irish parliamentary party, to Thomas A. Dickson, formerly a nationalist member of parliament, and since 1892 the principal organiser of the liberal home-rule vote in Ulster The importance of the document lies in the fact that it formed the basis of one of the most serious charges ever levelled against the Irish party in the course of its history. At the general election of 1895 the deep differences of opinion that had been dividing the anti-Parnellites almost since the time of the split came suddenly to a head. The majority section, headed by the chairman of the party, Justin McCarthy, and by John Dillon, insisted upon the right of the committee of the party to direct the nationalist effort in the election campaign. This claim was denied by the minority, led by T M. Healy, which asserted that the committee was unrepresentative and that it allowed too little freedom to the constituencies in the selection of candidates. As the election date drew near, there were frequent clashes between the supporters of the two wings of the party at the various conventions that were held in all parts of the country.
Social and economic conditions in the Belfast linen industry 1850-1900
Authors: Armstrong D. L.
Published: August 2016

The scope of this study may be briefly indicated. The central subject is the conditions of labour in the spinning mills and weaving factories of the Belfast linen industry during the period 1850—1900. This involves a consideration of such questions as the number of hours worked, the dangers to health and life associated with the character of the processes, and state and private attempts directed towards the amelioration of conditions. As an account of working conditions would be unreal without some reference to earnings, an attempt has been made to indicate the course of monetary and real wages during the period. As some knowledge of the general development of the industry is essential to an understanding of the problems investigated, the paper begins with an outline of this development.

Though the organisation of the linen industry was affected by the advent of capitalism before the end of the eighteenth century, it was not until 1829 that there was any fundamental change in technique. In that year Mulholland of Belfast, inspired by John Hinds, substituted the manufacture of linen for that of cotton and applied steam power to flax spinning, by the wet process.1 This individual act of enterprise was the prelude to a half century of rapid development. Another decide elapsed before any attempt was made to apply steam power to linen weaving and even then progress was slow.
The Anglo-Irish livestock trade of the seventeenth century
Authors: Woodward Donald
Published: August 2016

‘ … it is most certain that from I Jacobi to this day so long as Ireland hath had any degree of peace there hath been every year as great an importation of Irish cattle as there is now, and this he that will take the pains to examine the customs books shall find … ’

Sir Heneage Finch, in the house of commons, 18 October 1665

The Tudor subjugation of Ireland which was accomplished by the very end of Elizabeth's reign left the Irish economy in a depressed condition. But conquest brought more than economic dislocation. The success of English arms involved the destruction of the old Irish social system and permitted the development of a much more thorough programme of plantation than had been possible during the sixteenth century. The Ulster plantation, which followed the flight of the earls in 1607, was succeeded by smaller plantations in Leinster, Connaught, Wexford and King's County before 1641.
Dicey's conversion to unionism
Authors: Ford Trowbridge H.
Published: August 2016

During the struggle for Irish home rule and independence, A. V. Dicey, Vinerian professor of English law at Oxford, appears as the leading academic spokesman for the unionist forces. In 1886, while he denied having any special knowledge of Irish affairs, he rejected all proposals for altering the union on constitutional and national grounds:

Whatever may be the difficulties, or even the disadvantages, of maintaining the union, it undoubtedly has in its favour not only all the recommendations which must belong to a policy of rational conservatism, but also these two decisive advantages—that it does sustain the strength of the United Kingdom, and that it does not call for any dereliction of duty.
XXX Lord Spencer on the Phoenix Park Murders
Authors: Cooke A. B. , Vincent J. R.
Published: August 2016

The electoral debacle of 1874 removed only the least important aspect of Irish liberalism. The real strength of the liberal approach to Irish government continued to lie in the much less accessible, but much more important, official world of Dublin Castle which, in the early 1880s, was still confidently running Ireland as it thought best without too much reference to public opinion. The emergence of militant nationalism should not divert attention from the plain fact that the government of the country remained firmly in the hands of liberal-minded administrators, of whom very little is known. Dublin Castle, like Whitehall, guarded its secrets with care, the great scandal of 1884 marking the single departure from normal practice. The high value which the liberal establishment of 1880–85 placed on discretion is registered most forcibly through the lack of memoirs written by senior officials, whose competent management of affairs deserved a permanent literary memorial. No Boswell, or even Edward Hamilton (Downing Street's uncritical diarist at this time), came forward to describe the régime at work or at play. Unpublicised achievements are easily forgotten: and in this case the problem of penetrating a wall of silence is made more difficult by the absence of most of the appropriate archives. Apart from Spencer himself, only Thomas O'Hagan, the Irish lord chancellor (1880–81) and one of the least important figures in Forster's circle, seems to have preserved a substantial body of papers, though further discoveries may still be made.
The scientific investigation of the failure of the potato crop in Ireland, 1845-6
Authors: O'Neill Thomas P.
Published: August 2016

In the harvest of 1845 a disease, hitherto unknown in Ireland, phytophthora infestans, attacked the potato crop. The disease had made its appearance some years previously in north America and shortly afterwards in Europe. There is reason to believe that it already existed in south America, and it is possible that its failure to reach Europe with the early-introduced tubers was due to diseased tubers rotting during the long voyages under ‘ sail ’. The progress of the blight in European countries in the summer and early autumn of 1845 was reported in the Dublin Evening Post, which, without raising any serious alarm, pointed out the danger to the crop in Ireland. The seriousness of a failure of the staple food of the majority of the population must have been clear to every man struck by that possibility.
Lord Randolph Churchill and Home Rule
Authors: Quinault R. E.
Published: August 2016

‘If we wish to maintain the Act of Union we must abide by the conditions of the Act of Union.’

Lord Randolph Churchill 1883

‘It is rather in these old speeches that we find instruction than in anything said at the present day.’

Lord Randolph Churchill 1883

Controversy has always surrounded the Irish policy of Lord Randolph Churchill. In particular, he played an important part in opposing Gladstone’s home rule bill of 1886, when he ‘played the Orange card’. But despite this episode there has been much varied speculation about his real attitude towards home rule. Was he a sincere and consistent opponent of home rule, as his son and his friend, Rosebery, claimed, or was he, as Wilfred Blunt alleged, a secret sympathiser with home rule? Alternatively, did Churchill merely adopt an opportunist attitude towards home rule as Robert Rhodes James has implied? In their recent book, entitled The Governing Passion, A. B. Cooke and J. R. Vincent have produced a new and idiosyncratic interpretation of Churchill’s involvement with Ireland and home rule in the period 1885-6. The purpose of this enquiry is to re-examine these interpretations, especially Cooke and Vincent’s.
Attitudes to reform: political parties in Ulster and the Irish land bill of 1881
Authors: Thompson Francis
Published: August 2016

The Irish land act of 1881, it is generally agreed, was a victory for the Land League and Parnell, and nationalist policy with regard to the act and the attitude of southern tenants towards it have been many times subjected to detailed examination by historians of this period. In these analyses of the events of 1880–81, however, little reference is normally made to the part played by the different parties and interests in the north of the country. It is often assumed, for example, that the Ulster tenants held aloof from the campaign for reform, lending no more than occasional vocal support to the agitational efforts of tenants in the south and west. Indeed, they were later excoriated by William O'Brien, Michael Davitt and others not only for giving no support to the land movement but also for sabotaging Parnell's policy of testing the 1881 act by precipitately rushing into the land courts to take advantage of the new legislation: ‘that hard-fisted body of men, having done nothing themselves to win the act, thought of nothing but turning it to their own immediate use, and repudiating any solidarity with the southern and western rebels to whom they really owed it’. If, however, northern tenants were harshly judged by nationalist politicians in the years after 1881, the part played by the northern political parties in the history of the land bill has been either ignored or misunderstood by historians since that time. The Ulster liberals, for example, are rarely mentioned, the implication being that they made no contribution to the act even though it implemented almost exactly the programme on which they had been campaigning for much of the previous decade. The northern conservatives, on the other hand, are commonly seen as leading opponents of the bill, more intransigent than their party colleagues in the south, ‘quick to denounce any weakening of the opposition’ to reform, and ‘determined to keep the tory party up to the mark in defending the landlord interest’
The Irish Protestant Home Rule Association and nationalist politics, 1886–93
Authors: Loughlin James
Published: August 2016

As a proportion of their total population in Ireland, the number of protestants who became committed to the home-rule cause was undoubtedly small; and that being so, their role in nationalist politics in this period has usually been either overlooked, minimised, or misrepresented. Indeed one I recent writer has claimed that in Ulster ‘almost nobody — except my grandfather’ was prepared to support Gladstone's first home-rule bill.

The purpose of this paper, though, is not only to describe the extent of protestant support for home rule, but to attempt an assessment of the influence in home-rule politics of the Irish Protestant Home Rule Association (hereafter I.P.H.R.A.). As a protestant organisation it both exercised an influence on British liberal thinking on home rule and provided a perspective on Irish nationalism that was, in some very important respects, different from that of the overwhelmingly catholic National League.