Political life in Ireland in the third quarter of the eighteenth century was disturbed by three major opposition campaigns. From 1753 to 1756 there was the so-called money bill dispute in which Henry Boyle (later first earl of Shannon) mounted a formidable and largely successful opposition to the designs of the Dublin Castle administration for replacing him as chief undertaker. The years 1769-71 saw a noisy but ineffective opposition to Viscount Townshend’s plans for re-modelling the way Ireland was governed. And from 1778 to 1783 there was the famous patriot opposition led by Henry Grattan and Henry Flood which won for Ireland ‘a free trade’ and the ‘constitution of ’82’ The first and last ofthese opposition campaigns have been studied in detail; but the opposition to Townshend has been comparatively neglected, perhaps because the result was so unequivocally a victory for the Castle and hence less ‘heroic’ in its outcome than the other two campaigns. This paper sets out in the first instance to correct this imbalance by examining the reasons for the failure of the Irish opposition to Townshend.

The modification of the Cromwellian land settlement in Ireland which followed the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 was regulated by two acts of parliament, one familiarly known as the act of settlement of 1662, the other as the act of explanation of 1665. They became the principal legal instruments upon which land ownership in the country was to rest for two centuries.

The act of settlement was the statutory version, with the major addition of a preamble, of the so-called ‘Gracious declaration’ of 30 November 1660, a royal proclamation which enunciated the broad principles upon which the settlement was to be based. In its statutory form these principles were: the vesting in the king, as trustee for the purposes of the act, of all land confiscated since 23 October 1641 as a consequence of the rebellion, with the general exception of the land held on that date by the church and Trinity College, Dublin; the general confirmation to the adventurers and Cromwellian soldiers of the land they held on 7 May 1659; and the restoration of various classes of dispossessed proprietors, chiefly those catholics who could prove, before the commissioners appointed to execute the terms of the act, that they were innocent of having participated in the rebellion. Those found innocent were to be restored to their estates immediately without having to wait until the Cromwellian planters had first been ‘reprised’ (i.e. compensated) with land of equal value.

This article examines the structure and role of the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) in rural Ulster in 1922. It is argued the actions of the USC during this period have not received sufficient academic or public attention. The origins and organisational structure of the Specials are considered and it is claimed that the force’s decentralised make-up made it almost impossible to control. In terms of personnel, access to newly released archives gives unique insight into the force. Traditional assumptions about the connection between the pre-war Ulster Volunteer Force and the USC are questioned. Furthermore, it is found that few ‘B’ Specials had prior service with the British army. Overall, it is concluded that the Specials were an almost exclusively Protestant force made up of inexperienced and at times ill-disciplined recruits, most of whom were ill-suited to any policing role. Furthermore, it is argued that the Specials played a significant role in shaping post-partition identities in Northern Ireland.

In ‘An Agenda for women's history in Ireland, 1500–1900’ (1992), Margaret MacCurtain, Mary O'Dowd and Maria Luddy noted that research on convents and women religious (nuns/sisters) in Ireland was beginning to open up in the 1980s. They also suggested areas that merited the attention of scholars, including the experience of vowed religious life by women, issues of class and power within Irish convents, and the role of nuns in Irish society. This article examines historiographical developments, with a view to seeing whether or not scholars rose to the challenges posed in 1992. Additionally, it considers areas that still demand attention.

The study of the history of science has only within the last few decades attained the rank of an important field of enquiry for both scientist and historian. It was thus almost inevitable that, at first, attention should have been focused on the great and original thinkers like Boyle, Newton, Descartes, and Leibniz. But this type of approach frequently results in the presentation of a distorted picture, for few men are geniuses, and these are not truly representative of their age. The Irish scientists of the late seventeenth Century, who ranged from the very able to the pedantically dull, are far more typical examples of contemporary natural philosophers than are Newton or Boyle.

In 1680, science in Ireland was still a rare and infrequent study, and it must be admitted that the country had fallen behind the rest of Europe not only in the natural sciences but also in almost all other intellectual disciplines.

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.

Under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, which forms, with some slight amendments, the written constitution of Northern Ireland, power was given to the province to set up a separate record office for itself. When the transfer of services to Northern Ireland took place, no steps were at first taken to establish such an office, although circumstances would soon have necessitated the consideration of such a course. Local departments and minor courts contained an accumulation of documents which were aged over twenty years from the date of making, and therefore, according to a statutory provision, fit for transfer to the central repository. Partly from the disturbance of customary routine due to war conditions, partly from motives of prudence owing to the disturbed state of the country, which rendered transport unsafe, these documents had for some time not been transferred to Dublin. The destruction of the Four Courts in June 1922—which involved the loss of the Irish records and the specially equipped building in which they had been preserved—entailed the consequence that there was no longer in existence a repository suitable for the receipt of Northern Ireland records, even supposing that such would be sent out of the province in the altered situation. By an act of 1923, the northern government set up its own record office.

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.

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.

The usual route to the discovery of Froude’s English in Ireland in the eighteenth century, first published between 1872 and 1874, and Lecky’s History of Ireland in the eighteenth century, which first appeared as a separate work in 1892, lies through the bibliographies of more recent historians. Today, eighty to a hundred years after their appearance on the scene of history, politics and rature, these works are still authorities for the period they cover. They are monumental works: monuments to the skill, industry, personality and opinions of their authors and, in varying degrees, to their scholarship.

The point of origin of the ‘Irish historiographical revolution’ initiated by T. W. Moody and R. D. Edwards in the 1930s, which issued, among other things, in the foundation of Irish Historical Studies, is customarily located in their experiences together as research students in London University’s Institute of Historical Research. Hitherto, we have known little or nothing of those experiences beyond the recollections of the two principals themselves. This article uses the Institute’s own archive, and other contemporary documentary evidence, including surviving letters from Moody to Edwards, to elucidate the precise influence of the Institute and its staff in moulding their outlook. Rather than asserting some form of ideological indoctrination – for example in propagating an ethos of ‘value-free’ history writing – it argues that what was important was the example of the Institute’s institutional structures (including its Bulletin), which Moody and Edwards determined to replicate in Ireland; and that these structures, emphasising collaboration between historical researchers in pursuit of a common purpose, were themselves of the first importance in influencing the aspiration to create an Irish history free from confessional bias and overt expressions of political prejudice.

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 writings of Columbanus, Adomnán’s Life of Columcille and Bede’s account of the Irish mission to Northumbria together show us a church c. 600 remarkable for its austerity, its vitality and its happiness. Constant journeys and displacements, mean dwellings, common food, the discipline of study and prayer left the leaders not saddened but content, and commended them to the people’s veneration. The motive force of their actions was the love of God, followed with a rare degree of perfection; and, as the sources constantly say or imply, such love is no trouble. Vive in Christo ut Christus in te urges Columbanus, and Bede, in his sober summing-up on the Irish mission to Northumbria, while he disclaims any intimate knowledge of Columcille, testifies: ‘We know for certain that he left successors distinguished for their purity of life, their love of God and their loyalty to the monastic rule.’

The indifference to worldly interests which sustained these early pilgrims, and their concentration on purely religious values contrast sharply with the early ninth-century church, a great institution fully alive to the civilizing influence which power and wealth could exert. We need to know how this change came about, and in precisely what ways the church c. 800 differed from its predecessor.