To mark the bicentenary of the foundation of St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, there is presented here a select bibliography of printed material pertaining to aspects of the history of the college itself and also of Maynooth town and district.

Maynooth emerged as an important settlement by virtue of its association with the Anglo-Norman family of Fitzgerald in the late twelfth century. In 1176 Maurice Fitzgerald, founder of the Geraldine dynasty in Ireland, received confirmation of a grant of lands in the O’Byrne district of Uí Fáeláin, including the lordships of Maynooth and Naas, and Maynooth castle (the ruins of which stand adjacent to the entrance to the college) was subsequently constructed at the junction between two streams, the Lyreen and the Joan Slade. His grandson, Maurice, second baron of Offaly, was instrumental in having Maynooth elevated in ecclesiastical status: in 1248, at Maurice’s request, Archbishop Luke of Dublin erected Maynooth as prebend of St Patrick’s cathedral, and the perpetual right of presentation was entrusted to Fitzgerald and his successors.

The law tracts of early medieval Ireland are one of the most remarkable bodies of literature surviving from the middle ages. These tracts, written in Old Irish, date from the late seventh and eighth centuries and thus may be held to reflect something of Irish society not so very long after the introduction of Christianity. Their physical size and linguistic complexity alone have proved daunting, but once these difficulties have been surmounted the scholar is given a picture of society, albeit somewhat fragmentary in places, that suggests an astonishing degree of legal sophistication. One area in which this sophistication is most apparent is in the layers of grades of men for which the law tracts provide. If we are to believe the tracts, Ireland was an elaborately graded society. Even if we do not believe them, it is clear that those interested in law were also interested in the creation of systems of gradation around which to construct their legislation. Not surprisingly, given the importance of the subject, attempts have been made to make sense of social stratification in Ireland using the evidence provided by the law tracts. One of the more recent is by Neil McLeod. In a paper published in Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie in 1986–7 McLeod analysed the various ways in which the early Irish law tracts seem to depict social ranking. There has been been much dispute both over how accurately the law tracts portray social stratification in Ireland and how accurate a picture was intended, and McLeod takes issue with the line advanced by Binchy in his 1943 Rhŷs Lecture that the numerous grades found in the laws were of little or no practical significance and, implicit in his argument, were not really intended to be.

The term ‘Confederation of Kilkenny’ is not of ancient lineage. It dates from the nineteenth century and, as Professor J. C. Beckett has pointed out, seems to have originated in the title of a book by Father C. P. Meehan first published in 1846. Those members of the confederacy which ruled the major portion of the country between the rising of 1641 and the advent of Cromwell officially designated themselves as ‘the Confederate Catholics of Ireland’. Their own description of themselves has been chosen to head this essay not because the pedigree of the term ‘Confederation of Kilkenny’ is insufficiently old or respectable, but simply because their official title accurately describes what the essay is about. It is not concerned with the general history of the Confederate movement, nor with its prolonged diplomatic activities; still less does it deal with the ebb and flow of its military fortunes; nor even with the governmental structures of the Confederation. Of course I am relying on all these for background information and illustration, and, in particular, use has been made of the fact that I have been able to determine the number, and to identify almost the entire personnel, of the Confederation’s successive Supreme Councils. The history of the Confederation, political, diplomatic, constitutional and military, has been taken for granted. I want, then, to look at the people who individually bound themselves together by oath to form the confederacy; more particularly, to look at those who were members of the General Assemblies—constituting, in effect, the Confederate parliament; and more particularly still, to look at the members of the Supreme Councils, which virtually constituted the Confederate governments. This essay, therefore, is concerned with persons—with ‘the Confederate Catholics of Ireland’. It will briefly discuss their family origins, their educational and cultural background, their professions or occupations, and finally their political outlook.

The Irish mythology of the Great Famine of the 1840s explained the failure of the British government to prevent the deaths of some one million people in terms of a Whig government and ruling élite driven by a commitment to laissez-faire ideology which left them indifferent to the loss of Irish lives. At its most extreme, this mythology attributed a wilful genocide to the English. The term myth as used here does not necessarily imply that the account is untrue. Rather, the myth comprises a combination of fact, fiction and the unknowable in a narrative of such power that, for the people who accept it, the myth provides a guide to future understanding and action. In this respect, Irish mythology about the English and the Famine is rooted in facts: the resistance of the Whig government to any interference with the market; the staunch commitment to ideology of central figures in the making of famine policy such as Charles Trevelyan (assistant secretary to the treasury) and Sir Charles Wood (chancellor of the exchequer) and shapers of liberal opinion such as the political economists Nassau Senior and James Wilson (editor of The Economist); and the indifference to Irish suffering, and indeed the hostility to the Irish, as demonstrated in the language of the radical M.P.J.A. Roebuck.

During the civil rights campaign of the late 1960s the perception of the Stormont government as fascist was widespread among nationalists—a perception expressed in Nazi salutes and the chant ‘S.S.—R.U.C.’ when confronting the police. The historical reference this perception embodied, however, was less than comprehensive. In particular, it obscured the attraction that fascism and movements inspired by fascism had for many people in Britain and Ireland in the inter-war years; and while fascism did not give rise to a movement of major importance in Northern Ireland, it nevertheless had a more significant presence there than has sometimes been thought. For instance, Robert Fisk's view that the only fascists in the north were Italian émigrés, grouped in Belfast and Derry, is inaccurate. In fact at various times in this period there existed branches of the British Fascists (B.F.), representatives of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (B.U.F.), together with a brief but significant initiative on Northern Ireland by the leader of the Blueshirt movement in the Irish Free State, General Eoin O'Duffy. Unlike the local representatives of Italian fascism, who confined their activities chiefly to greeting visiting Italian dignitaries and maintaining links with the homeland, these groups were very much concerned with domestic politics. Fascism in Northern Ireland, however, has other claims to attention than those occasioned by their activities alone, for it also serves to illuminate the neglected area of B.U.F. attitudes to Ireland in general.

Geoffrey Henry Browne, third Baron Oranmore and Browne, K.P., P.C., cannot have had publication in mind when he penned his journal; many entries are too personal. He chronicled the progress of his children, Dominick, Kathleen and Geoffrey, detailing their childhood ailments without even drawing a veil over a tonsillectomy on the kitchen table. Of recurrent concern was the health of his wife, Onie. It is a private document, written with evident candour. Much of it properly concerns only the Browne family. However, there is a seam, rich in Anglo-Irish politics, which runs throughout the journal and which merits a wider audience. In selecting passages for publication, I have attempted to mine this seam faithfully if concisely, retaining a limited measure of anecdote and human interest in order to illuminate Oranmore’s attitudes as a southern Unionist, for this apella-tion can have the resonance of an oxymoron to modern ears.