The Church of Ireland continued to be active in Irish politics even after its disestablishment in 1869. In particular, its attitude to the slow emergence of an independent Ireland is being reconstructed. Andrew Scholes in his careful study focuses on reactions to Third Home Rule bill, with the attendant threats of partition and civil war. He traces the unfolding crisis: first, the threat of organised defiance from Ulster; then the outbreak of the First World War; the Easter Rising in 1916; and the unsuccessful attempts to agree a compromise at the Irish Convention of 1917. He suggests that long-standing anti-Catholic feelings had been strengthened by the apparent intransigence of the Ne temere papal decree of 1907. At the same time, members of the Church of Ireland, already active in Unionist clubs and enthusiastic supporters of the British Empire, joined other Protestants in Ireland in opposing any weakening of the tie with Britain. Under the pressure of events, unity within the Church of Ireland gradually gave way to awkward divergences, principally among its leading bishops (Crozier, Bernard and D'Arcy), but also between those living in the south (the prospective Free State) and the north, which was to be excluded from the new arrangements. Through synodical and parochial records and the newspapers, a complex picture is drawn. Yet Andrew Scholes, despite his wish, has not completely avoided dependence on the responses of a handful of bishops. While the fierce disagreements threatened the internal harmony of the Church of Ireland, it is not clear how much impact the manoeuvrings had on the development of policy within either Britain or Ireland.