In 1843 Daniel O’Connell’s campaign for repeal of the Act of Union won the support of millions of Irish Catholics. This movement, of which the famous ‘monster meetings’ were the most striking feature, greatly alarmed adherents to the union in both Britain and Ireland. This article is concerned with the response of those M.P.s who supported the union but repudiated ‘Protestant ascendancy’ and advocated removal of the grievances of Ireland’s Catholic majority. There were about forty such ‘liberal-unionist’ members then in parliament, their landed influence and popular sympathies having enabled them to emerge relatively unscathed from the Whig electoral disaster of 1841. They were a mixed bag of Protestants and Catholics, Whigs and liberals, and they had as little idea of party unity as the stereotypical independent member of nineteenth-century fame. This picture of unco-ordinated individual activity was to change dramatically in response to the momentous events of what O’Connell called ‘the great Repeal Year’.