When, in the 1850s, the second duke of Buckingham was editing the correspondence of his grandfather, the second Earl Temple and first marquis of Buckingham, he was clearly puzzled by what was revealed by that part of it which related to Temple’s vice-royalty in Ireland and the issue of ‘ renunciation ’ He wrote of the ‘ curious struggle ’ in the cabinet, ‘ the immense disproportion between cause and effect ’ and the ‘ clamour and misunderstanding ’ which he confessed it was ‘ difficult to understand ’, Today there is still some confusion about renunciation as an issue in English politics and it is the primary object of this article to dispel it. That it has secondary objects is solely the result of the discoveries, suggestions and conclusions of the many historians who have contributed to our understanding of Anglo-Irish relations in the later eighteenth century. It is now clear, for example, that Ireland was one of the most complex theatres in Britain’s external affairs in that period. To some extent this was due to the close geographical and mental proximity between the two countries which enabled politicians to travel and correspond easily from one to the other, a circumstance which led to policies being in a continuous state of formulation and, equally, under continuous scrutiny—in contrast to Britain’s foreign and colonial relations where language and more considerable geographical problems gave policy makers more time to deliberate, and incidentally, reduced the number of interested parties around Whitehall. Similarly there was a contrast between the quality and effectiveness of the official procedures that were adopted for the arrangement of Anglo-Irish relations and those which were followed in other spheres of Britain’s external affairs. Viceroys enjoyed a higher status than ambassadors and sometimes imagined they possessed an almost complete control over their domain. As a consequence they were often not subjected to detailed written instructions as was Earl Fitzwilliam in 1795, and in some cases managed to construct policies without the knowledge or concurrence of the official spokesman for Irish affairs in the cabinet (the home secretary), as did the marquis of Buckingham during the regency crisis in 178g.

This article examines the actions of the various groups that made up the Ulster Protestant interest from shortly after the end of the First Civil War in England in late 1646 to the defeat of the Engagement in 1648. At the beginning of this period the English parliament took a renewed interest in Ulster, sending men and commanders, which accelerated a process of polarising the hitherto united Ulster British forces along ethnic lines. This culminated in almost unanimous support for the Engagement by the Ulster Scottish élite, while their Ulster English counterparts generally remained loyal to the parliamentary commanders in the province. Within Ulster Scottish society a further division occurred, between the royalist-inclined élite and much of the populace, who followed their Presbyterian ministers in opposing the Engagement. The article attempts to explain why the Ulster Scottish elite made this choice, and seeks to place this series of events within a British/Irish context, exhibiting the interrelated nature of events in each of the three kingdoms from the unique perspective of Protestant Ulster.

It is ironic that in Ireland, a country which has witnessed some of the most successful catholic-inspired crusades against alcohol consumption, the catholic church cannot be said to have been particularly favourably inclined towards the temperance movement. The Irish protestant churches and the catholic church in countries like the United States of America, England and Australia (where its membership was largely Irish) were far more forthright and consistent in their support for temperance than was the catholic church in Ireland itself. The Irish church’s ambivalent attitude to the anti-drink movement sprang from a variety of sources, some related to the nature of Irish society, others to the nature of the Irish temperance movement. To elucidate the church’s attitude and the reasons for its hostility to the anti-drink movement, I shall in this paper examine the development of the catholic temperance movement in Ireland from Father Mathew’s crusade in the 1840s to the rise of the Pioneer Total Abstinence League of the Sacred Heart in the 1890s.

The Irish question, in one form or another, became a feature of American public life from the period of the great Irish migration to the United States in the 1840s to the twentieth century. Seemingly each generation saw a version of the Irish struggle for self-government played out in both Ireland and America. By 1920 this struggle, in the shape of the War of Independence or the Anglo-Irish War, had assumed dramatic proportions.

Many Irish-Americans, anxious to assist and support the nationalist movement in Ireland, resumed their traditional role of raising money for Ireland and attempting to influence the American government to intercede in some way on Ireland’s behalf. In 1919 Eamon de Valera, president of Dáil Íireann, went to the United States to further these objectives. However, serious rifts developed within the leadership of the Irish nationalist movement in the United States which caused Irish-Americans to divide into several hostile groups. The result was that during the summer and autumn of 1920, when crown forces in Ireland were escalating their military campaign, the Irish-American nationalist movement was largely ineffectual.

Ireland’s uses of knowledge of the diaspora, much matured since the 1950s, now provide two master images from which to approach it: diversity and cohesion. On 2 February 1995 President Mary Robinson pinpointed its diversity as embodying the multifaceted nature of native Irish identities, and as a makeweight in domestic argument and experiment as to the recognition and acceptance of those identities. In March 1998 President Mary McAleese spoke of ‘our global Irish family’; she accepted such diversity, but sought its reintegration in a master image of cohesion, one obtaining both at home and abroad. The new Article 2 of the Irish constitution states that ‘The Irish nation cherishes its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its cultural identity and heritage.’

In each case, desired standards are merged with claimed realities as to the diaspora. But any such emphasis whether on cohesion or diversity among the overseas Irish matches a growing body of work on the diaspora itself, much of it by the scholars within those communities. Critical work on this scale has not appeared before now. In the past collective work of this kind typically consisted of reprints and dissertations. One might question whether this scholarship answers the external burdens placed upon it.

The manpower alone here involved would suggest so. Over two hundred writers produce the Irish diaspora subjects in the four works here reviewed. And two of the editors, O’Sullivan, born in Kilmallock in 1944, a youthful migrant to Britain, and Glazier, an adult migrant to America, both epitomise the curiosity and enterprise of the newer emigrant scholars.

As reactions to yet another initiative on Northern Ireland underlined the durability of traditional perspectives on both sides of the border, it was understandable that there should have been some nostalgic re-examination in the Irish media of the might-have-been of Gladstone’s first home rule initiative of a hundred years ago. Centenaries increasingly stimulate historians and publishers into action also, but the two major new studies of the home-rule ‘episode’ from Gill and Macmillan take a pessimistic, even jaundiced view of the 1886 scheme as unworkable, and incapable of satisfying Irish nationalists, much less unionists. Despite its precipitation of a major political realignment in British politics and its confirmation of Irish political polarisation, the crisis of 1885-6 has received relatively little attention from historians. In Britain, the only major study since Hammond’s romantic Gladstone and the Irish nation has been the decidedly anti-romantic and detailed dissection of the web of party intrigue and political calculation and infighting involved in Cooke and Vincent’s The governing passion.

The enactment, by the Irish parliament of 1494-5, of the measure later known as Poynings' Law had far-reaching effects upon the whole subsequent course of Irish parliamentary history to 1782. Poynings' Law was the foundation-stone of a peculiar system of legislative procedure which made it impossible for the Irish parliament to develop on parallel lines with the parliament of England. It prescribed conditions to be observed by the Irish executive, with regard to the summoning and proceedings of the legislature, which were seldom satisfactory to both parties at the same time, and resulted in protracted attempts by each in turn to have the law altered in accordance with changes in their own character, circumstances and interests. The function and interpretation of the law passed through a number of distinct phases, and it was only in the later phases that it came to be regarded as a hated symbol of the subordination of the Irish parliament.

The year 1842 was one of preparation for the revival of the movement for repeal of the act of union. O'Connell had been elected lord mayor of Dublin in November 1841, and he allowed the Repeal Association to mark time during his tenure of office. The year was not regarded as wasted, however, as his conduct as mayor tended to increase his popularity, and ensured that he would be able to commence his campaign in the following year with a more solid backing of public opinion. It was during this year also that Davis, Duffy and Dillon first came together and made their plans for launching a new nationalist newspaper. They were all members of the Repeal Association, but only one of them (Duffy) had any extensive experience of journalism. The Nation newspaper first began to appear in October 1842.

Almost nothing is known of trade between Ireland and the continent during the first half of the seventeenth century. It is true that the existence of direct commercial links can be deduced from isolated references in the state papers and elsewhere, but these give little or no material for constructing a detailed picture. The importance of the wine trade may be inferred from the fact that when customs duties were increased in 1632, wine, along with salt, was the only imported commodity to be affected; from this one may conclude that the administration considered that the quantity of wine imported was sufficiently great for an increased duty to be worthwhile. This is indirect evidence, however. The value of the present document is that it throws some direct light upon the state of an important branch of Irish overseas trade in a particular year. The destruction of all but a few of the Irish port books makes such direct evidence all the more valuable. Mention may here be made of copies of some of the earliest Irish port books which are to be found in the papers of Sir Arthur Ingram who was one of the original farmers for Ireland in 1613. The examination of continental economic arcives may in due course help to fill the gap still futher.

The celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the two societies, the Irish Historical Society and the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies, suggests that, having looked backwards over the achievements of the first forty years, we may look forward to what might be done in the comparable future.

The main achievements of these societies, the promoting of objective Irish history and the maintaining of a common cultural outlook on Irish history, were secured by the admission of Ireland as a cultural entity to the international historical organisation, the Comité International des Sciences Historiques.

Elizabeth Butler, marchioness of Ormonde, came to prominence during the middle years of the seventeenth century as a result of her care of Protestant refugees in the aftermath of the 1641 rebellion; her royalist exile in Caen; her successful claim to a portion of the confiscated Ormonde estate; and her subsequent retirement to Dunmore in County Kilkenny. Her letters from the 1650s and 1660 provide valuable insight on her role as an influential Irish royalist, and specifically reveal the importance of women in the social and political network that supported her through this tumultuous period. Prominent among the women in her network include the anonymous ‘JH’, a kinswoman who acted as Ormonde's intelligencer and spy in Cromwell's court in London in the early 1650s; Katherine, Lady Ranelagh, an acquaintance who wielded significant influence with the Cromwellian administration in Dublin and acted as Ormonde's intermediary in the mid 1650s; a group of pre-eminent British noblewomen from prominent royalist families with whom Ormonde maintained a relationship of mutual support from the 1650s into the 1660s; and finally Anne Hume, Ormonde's friend, confidante and long-serving waiting gentlewoman, who acted as her agent and messenger as Ormonde prepared for the Restoration in May 1660. Offering a more granular examination of Ormonde's activities during the 1650s than has been undertaken to date, this article shows that women were of primary importance to Ormonde's survival and indeed thriving through the Interregnum. More broadly, it indicates that female alliances were key to women's political agency in Cromwellian Ireland and that women were central to royalist political activity during the Interregnum.

James Eadie Todd was appointed to the chair of modern history in Queen’s University, Belfast in 1919, aged thirty-four, having previously held academic posts in Edinburgh, Montreal and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Todd published almost nothing but spent his career as a teacher, and his carefully prepared formal lectures guided generations of Queen’s students to a pass degree. But he also had the ability to inspire a minority of students to the further study of history and several of his pupils went on to occupy chairs of history in Ireland and Great Britain. During the 1930s, with his former pupil T. W. Moody, he created an honours and graduate school with a strong emphasis on Irish history. Todd stressed the importance of the objective study of the sources. Behind the scenes he was instrumental, with others, in founding the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies and establishing Irish Historical Studies. His later years were plagued by ill health and personal bereavement. He retired in 1945 and died four years later. The article concludes with an assessment of Todd’s importance to the professionalisation of Irish historical scholarship.