In the thirty years since the publication of ‘An agenda for women's history in Ireland’, the study of women's and gender history has been transformed. The introduction to this special issue contextualises the ‘Agenda’ within this evolving landscape, underlining the significant role it played in stimulating scholarship by outlining some of the major developments in the field since 1992. The introduction also points to developments that the authors, Margaret MacCurtain, Mary O'Dowd and Maria Luddy, could not have foreseen when writing the ‘Agenda’, such as rapid technological advances and the possibilities they have opened up for scholars of women and gender in Irish history. By tracing these developments, the introduction serves as a gateway into the articles that form the special issue: contributions that demonstrate the wide-reaching and multifaceted impact of the ‘Agenda’ and the three pioneering scholars who authored it, and that provide thought-provoking analysis of existing and future scholarship in the field.

Following some of the themes of the original ‘An agenda for women's history in Ireland, 1500–1900’ and others that were not as prominent, this article considers progress since 1992 and highlights opportunities for the further development of Irish early modern women's and gender history. It considers aspects of the life cycle of women and men, especially birth, youth and marriage; the economic roles of women, especially when it came to work and property; and the importance of movement to and from Ireland in both personal biographies and wider contexts. It also reflects on some of the ways in which understandings of early modern politics and of religion and belief for the period c.1550–1720 have been transformed by consideration of the role of women. While the ‘Agenda’ noted the potential of buildings and spaces, there has been a new emphasis on ‘things’ as remnants of lives and labour, expressions of cultural norms and tools in the construction of gender, selfhood and social status. Very early on, the ‘Agenda’ strongly stated that ‘the history of women is also the history of men’, and this article also notes the green shoots of the history of masculinity in early modern Ireland.

This article examines the memoirs written by Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, fourth earl of Carnarvon, concerning his period as lord lieutenant of Ireland between June 1885 and January 1886, in the brief Salisbury administration. Carnarvon inherited many of the problems of his Liberal predecessor, fifth Earl Spencer, telling Salisbury ‘the day of reckoning in this case will come very rapidly if any unwise promises are made or implied’. Nevertheless he was sympathetic to reform in many different fields, notably home rule, land reform, education and religion. A sensitive politician, Carnarvon penned this memorandum shortly after leaving office in an attempt to uphold his reputation. The memorandum gives a number of insights into Carnarvon’s manoeuvrings in cabinet, and demonstrates the workings of high politics in the late-nineteenth century. It was never published.

In 1903 the governor of South Africa, Lord Alfred Milner, agreed to proposals from the owners of the Transvaal gold mines to alleviate the labour shortage caused by the recent war by recruiting workers from China. The Conservative government of Arthur Balfour gave its approval in May 1904, and had overall responsibility for the scheme until it yielded power to the Liberals in December 1905. The so-called ‘coolies’ were to be indentured on a three-year contract, paid less than the blacks, and quarantined from the local population. Well before the first shipment arrived on the Witwatersrand in June 1904, British trade unionists were alarmed that a precedent was being set for the importation of cheap labour closer to home, and Britain’s ‘Non-conformist conscience’ was disturbed at the spectre of ‘nameless practices’ developing in compounds of young men separated from their families. Events seemed to bear out the apprehensions.

A part from the surviving state papers (notably those of Lord Lieutenant Clarendon) one of the most important sources for the history of Ireland in the reign of James II is the ‘Narrative’ written in 1702 by Thomas Sheridan. Sheridan was appointed secretary to Lord Deputy Tyrconnell and first commissioner of the revenue at the end of 1686 and was dismissed, following allegations of corruption, early in 1688. Sheridan claimed that James had made him secretary against Tyrconnell’s wishes so that he could watch Tyrconnell’s behaviour on his behalf, and that Tyrconnell fabricated the charges of corruption in order to be rid of him. Most historians, especially those hostile to Tyrconnell, have accepted Sheridan’s account as accurate. Sir James Mackintosh, for example, wrote : ‘Clarendon and Sheridan’s MSS agree so exactly in their picture of Tyrconnell, have such an air of truth in their accounts of him that it is not easy to refuse them credit, though they were both his enemies’.

Literary evidence for political and social developments in medieval Ireland comes down to us in a variety of languages: Latin; a rich and — by European standards — early production in the Irish vernacular; Old Norse; Middle English; with sparser reference in Old English, Welsh and other nearby linguistic communities. Some of this evidence, tightly circumscribed in time, is also in Anglo-Norman French, and reflects a very different Ireland from that of Arthurian romance. These Anglo-Norman works, composed in Ireland or in Britain on the basis of eye-witness testimony, constitute a unique body of material, though their value as historical evidence is constricted in two ways: firstly, they are limited to three preserved texts; secondly, they are rigorously selective in their criteria of historiographical relevancy and in their treatment of the native Irish population, culture and political presence.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were six superior courts in Ireland—chancery, the three common law courts (king’s bench, common pleas and exchequer), the admiralty court and the prerogative court (an ecclesiastical court with jurisdiction over testamentary matters).Four of these courts were of medieval origin. The exchequer was probably in existence before the close of the twelfth century, the Irish chancery was founded early in the thirteenth century, the first Irish chancellor being appointed in 1244, and the antecedents of the courts of king’s bench and common pleas are to be found in the thirteenth century. The other two courts were comparatively modern. The court of prerogative and faculties based its rights to exercise jurisdiction on two sixteenth century acts and two seventeenth century patents, one of James I and one of Charles I. And though admiralty jurisdiction had been exercised in Ireland from medieval times, the Irish court of admiralty had been created by statute in 1784. From the court of chancery and the three common law courts there was an appeal to the court of error (known as the court of exchequer chamber) composed of the judges of the three common law courts, and in 1857 it was enacted that the court of exchequer chamber when hearing an appeal should consist of the judges of the two courts from which the appeal did not arise. From the admiralty court and from the prerogative court there was an appeal to delegates in chancery.

It is a historical truism that the ‘Irish question’ dominated British parliamentary life during the last third of the nineteenth century. For good reason does Sir Robert Ensor give one of the chapters in England, 1870-1914 the title ‘The ascendancy of Parnell’. Yet it is the custom to treat the Irish nationalist contingent at Westminster as concerned only with Irish questions. It has been observed, to be sure, that the ‘Irish question’ had a highly significant impact upon English affairs. The Irish land acts of 1870 and 1881, for example, have come to be seen as a type of government intervention in economic affairs foreshadowing the twentieth-century welfare state. One aspect of the existence of an Irish third party at Westminster has, however, been curiously neglected, the impact of Irish M.Ps upon essentially English political controversies. It is with one such controversy that this paper is concerned, the notorious Bradlaugh case.

Writers on the Irish land war have long been influenced by such contemporary accounts as Michael Davitt’s The fall of feudalism in Ireland, published in 1904. Given Davitt’s leading position in the Land League, it was only natural that most subsequent histories of the movement borrowed heavily from this publication. The history of the Land League has been viewed from the centre; its local base in the west of Ireland has received less attention. This neglect has resulted in marginalising many of the personalities within the regions, who were important not only to the success of the organisation but also to its origins. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the case of James Daly and the agrarian movement in Connacht. Only recently has Daly’s contribution begun to receive the attention it merits from historians, with the result that he can no longer be deemed ‘the most forgotten man of Irish history’. However, these studies have failed to trace Daly’s full involvement with the Land League and to note his volte-face, when he changed from being its most ardent supporter to become its bitterest internal critic.

I

James Daly was born in 1838 at Cloonabinna, Boghadoon, County Mayo, the eldest son of a prosperous tenant farmer who rented land from Sir Roger Palmer and had a forty-eight-acre farm on Colonel Charles Cuffe’s property at Coachfield, near Castlebar. Later the family rented land on the earl of Erne’s estate near Castlebar and a farm valued at £45 at Ballyshane in the electoral district of Breaghwy.

The act of the Irish parliament of 1494-5, known as Poynings’ Law, was of outstanding importance in the history of that parliament down to its virtual repeal in 1782, but, owing to the brevity of its text, the changing nature of the relations between the English government and the Anglo-Irish administration and the development of the organisation of the Irish parliament, it passed through various stages of interpretation and significance which require to be studied separately.

References in the consultas on Ireland in the Simancas archives continually remind the student of the larger background against which the invasion of 1601–2 took place. It was a background in which the emphasis insofar as Spanish foreign relations were concerned was on disengagement. But while Spain had concluded peace with France, sent out overtures to England, was seeking to extricate herself from the costly Dutch war and conducted negotiations even with Constantinople, she yet maintained a jealous care for her greatness. Thus war with France threatened to erupt over Savoy; Spain continued support to Archduke Albert, sovereign of the Netherlands, in his struggle against the United Provinces; she sought to support the emperor's eastern war against the Turk by attacking the Berbers in the Mediterranean; and she tried to extract better peace terms from England by creating a diversion in Ireland.

In the mid-1880s English political leaders found it essential to develop new policies for Ireland. While the liberals, led by Gladstone, were converted to the home-rule solution, the tories sought to preserve the union with a two-pronged policy. First, Ireland’s economic disorders were to be cured by vigorously developing the system of state-aided land purchase, and by having the imperial treasuly assume a large portion of the cost of developing the country’s natural resources and industrial potential. This aspect of the policy rested upon the tory conviction that Irish support of home rule would diminish in direct proportion to significant economic and social advance. The second part of the policy called for the establishment of a democratic system of local government which was to be the limit of political concessions to Irish nationalist sentiment.

In recent years our understanding of the attempts of the Irish Protestant élite to convert and ‘civilise’ Ireland in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries has increased substantially. Some historians have examined the various campaigns to convert the largely Irish-speaking Catholic native population to Protestantism, through schools, the employment of Irish-speaking clergy and the publication of key religious texts in Irish. Others have explored Protestant efforts to civilise Ireland by bringing its governmental and legal infrastructure into line with those of England and through the spread of English dress, language, industries and agriculture.

Among emigrants, the canny and the politic have often risen to some influence. It is flattering to believe that such people made a difference. But for most, ubi panis, ibi patria — conformity and loyalty were the natural price of daily bread and the essential cost of any real eminence. Even constructive opposition presupposed this. Those who thought otherwise were marginalised, sensibly enough, by their hosts.