The Arroasian order was one of the most important of the twelfth-century congregations of canons regular of St Augustine. The development of the institute of the canons regular may be said to have had two phases. From early christian times it was comparatively common for communities of priests, forming the staff of cathedral or large city churches, to imitate the monastic rule of life. In the general disorder which followed upon the barbarian invasions this practice disappeared. It was revived again under Charlemagne, only to suffer a similar fate on the break-up of his empire. At this stage we find secular priests performing collegiate and parochial work while living a regular life under a rule usually given them by a bishop.

Like most historical subjects the question of the expansion has suffered both from an over-enthusiastic and too uncritical an approach and from an unduly sceptical and hypercritical attitude towards the sources of information. And both attitudes are visible from the very beginning of interest in the subject.

In examining what seem to me to have been significant fields (or significant concentrations) of study in recent times, I wish to show how these have reacted on our conception of general history and how our very notion of the historian's universe has been undergoing a subtle transformation. In attempting to discuss some of the points where pressure has been exerted on historical study by war and international crisis, I wish to show how the very nature of history and the results of historical analysis prescrjbe to the historian his role when the momentous-ness of the contemporary world confronts him with claims and challenges. It will be useful to hold the figure of Lord Acton in the background, in order to measure the modern version of the human drama, and the modern view of the historian's function in the world, against the one which he so explicitly formulated.

In the rugged career of Michael Davitt, the document known as the ' pen ' letter is of far-reaching significance, both because of the malignant influence which it exerted and because of the revelation of his personality which its history affords.

The see of Derry was (until the disestablishment of the church) one of the richest in Ireland, and the success of King William's forces in the north not unnaturally aroused some speculation about the next occupant. It is true that when the siege of Derry was raised Bishop Hopkins was still alive, but his unpopular action in opposing resistance to James's army no doubt helped to persuade the king's ecclesiastical advisers that his health was unequal to the continued discharge of his duties. At any rate, by September 1689, at least nine months before Hopkins died, it was generally known that George Walker was to have the appointment.

Statements as to the number of (and the elements composing) the government force which faced the French at Castlebar on Monday morning, 27 August 1798, differ widely and some of them are surprising. A history of the Irish rebellion published in 1898 by F. W. Palliser puts the number of the government troops at 16,000 or 17,000. Dr Richard Hayes gives the number as 5,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry. Fortescue speaks of Lake arriving at Castlebar ‘ where Hutchinson had already assembled four thousand men chiefly militia and fencibles ‘, but he also speaks of his having been next morning at the time of the attack ‘ in a strong position with some 1,700 men ‘. The aggregate strength is by many writers stated as relatively ‘ more than thrice ‘ that of the French; a contemporary example of this is in the Annual Register for 1798.

The period 1461 to 1603 is crucial in the determination of the character of modern Irish history It divides fairly evenly at 1534 into a first phase in which the medieval order reaches its culmination and into a second in which the destruction of much of that order is completed and the foundations for the modern colonial period are laid. In the first, life in all its aspects is variegated with separate and interpenetrating social and governmental groupings of considerable complexity.

The ‘ Tigernach ’ Annals—the name is preferable to the current term ‘ Annals of Tigernach ’, which has grown out of a misunderstanding of an anonymous gloss—is one of the many varieties of a document which needs some such specific name as ‘ The Irish Annals ’ All the books of annals—‘ Ulster ’, ‘ Boyle ’, ‘ Inisfallen ’, ‘ Clonmacnois ’, ‘ Chronicum Scotorum ’, and the rest—are merely diversified forms of one fundamental text; this would be obvious if they were printed in parallel columns. The differences between them are due chiefly to interpolations, made not so much by compilers or scribes as by an endless succession of glossators.

Under this heading we intend from time to time to publish articles dealing with work to be done on various periods and subjects of Irish historyWriters in the series are free to treat their respective sections in their-own way, and the articles will appear as they become available.

It has been usual in works on nineteenth century Irish history to treat the Irish Church Act, 1869, as having been solely or predominantly an act of political justice and a setting right of an unfair relationship between churches and communities. The important place which the act holds in British economic policy as the first enactment for state-aided tenant purchase of land in Ireland has been generally ignored. What attention the subject of tenant purchase at that early period has received both from contemporaries and from subsequent writers has been mainly centred on the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870, which was, in its tenant purchase provisions, a much less successful and less extensively applied measure. There are several reasons for this ignoring of the place of the Irish Church Act in the history of tenant purchase. Neither the act nor any part of it was classified as falling within the mass of legislation to which the collective citation of the Land Purchase (Ireland) Acts was given, nor was it specifically directed to be read as part of any of these later acts.