The obscurity surrounding Richard’s involvement in his Irish lordship has made it difficult to understand royal policy for Ireland in the 1390s, despite the availability in print of many original sources recording the successes of his first Irish expedition. These documents reveal how Richard in 1394-5 succeeded in winning more wide-spread submissions from Gaelic Ireland than any of his predecessors had done, and that this was the deliberate aim of royal policy cannot seriously be doubted. Historical neglect of this material as evidence on royal policy has resulted from reservations about the political value of Gaelic submission, which, it has been assumed, was the inevitable by-product of any royal visit and a poor alternative to military conquest. This dismissive attitude towards Gaelic submissions to the crown, judged by what they effected rather than what they sought to establish.

The suppression of the Irish provincial presidencies in August 1672 has received scant attention from historians. Scarcity of surviving source material has resulted in little serious scholarship being devoted to this particular form of regional government. This basic handicap was intensified by the circumstances of the decision to terminate the system. No serious abuses existed in its operation and no demand for its removal was evident yet the decision was implemented without official explanation. As a result most writers on restoration Ireland have confined themselves to brief and guarded generalisations when dealing with the subject.

Desmond Bowen’s recently published ‘Study of Protestant-Catholic relations between the Act of Union and Disestablishment’ has been a well received investigation of the polarisation between evangelical anglicanism and an increasingly ‘Roman’ catholicism. In his view the historically fragmented religio-political culture of pre-nineteenth century Ireland was, after 1822, the perfect battleground for two imperialistic ecclesiastical systems: ‘When protestant proselytising was openly encouraged in parts of the country after 1822 and the movement for emancipation gained momentum, the castigation of religious leaders who urged conciliation instead of confrontation increased.’

On 11 July 1921 a truce between the British army and the army of the selfproclaimed Irish Republic began, and the politicians on both sides prepared instead to settle the Irish question by negotiation. For Lloyd George, if negotiation failed, the alternative would be war. His troops would remain in Ireland and his generals would prepare for the resumption of the campaign, if and when he so resolved — a position the implications of which he continued to stress for the benefit of the Irish.

In the months following signature of the Anglo-Irish treaty the British government was particularly concerned with the transfer of power to a legally constituted government and parliament in Dublin which would be committed to implementation of the treaty and supported by an electoral majority This goal was, however, subject to an overriding consideration: preservation, at almost any cost, of the agreement embodied in the treaty The Collins-de Valera pact brought these considerations into conflict. It is the purpose of this paper to examine why the British government, and Winston Churchill in particular, objected so strenuously to the pact and why, despite these objections, an election under the terms of the pact was permitted.