The historical importance of the Irish National Land League lies primarily in its contribution to the politicization of Irish agrarian society. During the years 1879-82 the Land League conducted a tenant right campaign embracing virtually every county in the south and west of Ireland, and an extensive portion of the midlands as well. In these areas it organized an impressive network of local branches, which drew large numbers of farmers into political activity. The movement was not, however, organized by farmers alone. The central direction of the agitation was assumed by a contingent of Irish nationalists, while local leadership was provided, in large measure, by a discontented segment of the town population. Townsmen were numerically well represented in the Land League, they played an instrumental role in initiating the agitation, and they continued, once league branches had become established, to help organize meetings and enforce the league’s authority in local land disputes. Hence, though the Land League was principally a farmers’ organization, and though, in the end, it served to politicize Irish farmers, it was the the product of an alliance between two distinguishable social groups.

In any account of the liberal party’s dealings with Ireland, Gladstone must occupy a dominant and dynamic position. Yet perhaps his most significant legacy was a negative one. His dramatic and, from the party point of view, destructive failures with home rule in 1886 and 1893 demonstrated to two generations of liberal leaders, Morley and Lloyd George no less than Rosebery and Crewe, and even to his own son Herbert, that so long as the house of lords retained a legislative veto, home rule for Ireland could not be a practical part of the liberal programme. A recent article has shown that ‘ disengagement ‘ from home rule was evolved during the period from 1894 to 1905 as a matter of deliberate policy, and was not simply the result of a huge independent majority won by the party in 1906. It was a policy dictated by necessity, but it evolved, nonetheless, only gradually, through a series of compromises between two warring factions of the party. Where Rosebery and the extreme liberal imperialists worked to exclude home rule from the party programme altogether in 1900-1, Gladstonians wanted only to put it into cold storage. Again, when liberal imperialists and even uncommitted liberals called for a self-denying ordinance on home rule for the 1906 election, Gladstonians wanted the party simply to steer clear of any firm commitment. What averted a split on the earlier occasion was Asquith’s enunciation of a ‘ step by step ‘ principle on home rule in such a way as to differentiate it clearly from Rosebery’s ‘ clean slate’, while in the autumn of 1905 party unity was restored by Campbell-Bannerman’s promise to translate this principle into a legislative proposal.

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.

The recent rediscovery of Herbert Gladstone’s rather fragmentary journal for 1880-85 has made it possible to throw more light on the Irish situation as seen through liberal eyes in the period leading up to the ‘ Kilmainham treaty ’. We wish to thank Sir William Gladstone, Bt, firstly for locating the journal at Hawarden Castle, Flintshire, and secondly for his good offices in making available for publication the section relating to Irish affairs in 1881-2. The irregularly kept volume extends to about 250 quarto pages, but apart from the entries made in 1881-2 it contains little material of more than marginal significance.

The following list includes books and articles on Irish history in which the year 1970 is given in the work itself as the date of publication, together with Addenda for 1965-9. The list excludes current works of reference, parliamentary publications, writings on contemporary politics, and items in newspapers; reports of archaeological finds and literary and linguistic studies, presented without reference to their historical context; and writings of little scholarly value. Reviews or short notices of many of the items listed will be found in this journal.