Dr Terence Ranger in a stimulating and valuable article on Strafford in Ireland has taken the story of the Byrnes’ country as an example of ‘the combination of cunning, idealism and self-interest which characterised Strafford’s methods …’. He claims that ‘the truth is more complex and more interesting’ than others who have ‘not unravelled the full story’ supposed. Dr Ranger’s version of the truth has been completely endorsed, elegantly summarised and widely circulated by Miss Wedgwood.It will be contended that Dr Ranger has not unravelled the full story of an episode, which in some respects still defies unravelling, and that he has unwittingly misrepresented Strafford’s part in it. A fuller account, however inconclusive, may be of value, if it gives more accurate information about Strafford’s income from Irish land and about one episode in his policy of plantation.

With this issue of Irish Historical Studies we complete our thirtieth year of publication. Among other ways of marking the occasion, as announced in our last issue, a series of survey-articles has been planned, assessing the contribution of the past thirty years to the historiography of Ireland. Three of these articles appear below. The series is to be completed in five further articles dealing with Ireland before the Norman invasion, sixteenth-century Ireland (1485–1603), nineteenth-century Ireland (1800–1914), Ireland since 1914, and, finally, Irish history generally.

The French revolution split the English whigs over profound issues of principle. One section, of which Fox was the most prominent member, viewed the revolution, at least in its earlier stages, with considerable sympathy and argued that the war with France could have been avoided. The other section accepted Burke’s interpretation of the revolution and at the beginning of 1793 supported the government’s intervention in the European war. And from the middle of 1792 the possibility of a coalition between this latter section and Pitt was in the air. One factor which delayed the formation of a coalition government was the attitude of the duke of Portland, ‘the natural leader’ of the whig party. Portland, who combined pride of birth with a sense of duty, some political shrewdness and strong opinions which he expressed, when writing, with considerable fluency, seems to have inspired genuine respect and even affection amongst those who worked with him. But he was hesitant, and in the early nineties, while accepting Burke’s views on the revolution, he did not wait to split his party. The existence of the whig party, ‘a union of persons of independent minds and fortunes formed and connected together by their belief in the principles by which the revolution of 1688 was founded’, was essential, he believed, to the welfare of the country. The whig party ‘which alone is entitled to be distinguished by the name of party’, he asserted, ‘must be as eternal as I conceive the constitution of this country to be’.

Historical piety rightly begins with the society itself. We have paid careful attention to our own anniversaries. Nine years ago, we had an address on our coming-of-age, five years ago a dinner to celebrate our silver jubilee : on this thirtieth anniversary, we have both. On earlier occasions it was right to think of earlier days: of our founders and founding members; of their aims and hopes and plans, and their success in the task of raising funds and winning friends and influence. I myself, if not a founder, became a member near enough to those brave beginnings to feel a personal share in the debt we owe to R. M. Henry and David Chart and Samuel Simms, and less directly but with no less appreciation to that great teacher, the kindly guide of so many, James Eadie Todd, to mention some who live only in our memory; and to others, notably Theo Moody, who have seen their purpose fulfilled in Ulster and Ulster’s example become an inspiration to Ireland.

My prime concern in approaching this subject was to discover, if possible, some precise facts about the finances of the landowning class in what is generally accounted to have been their years of greatest affluence. This article is in effect a report on such sources of information as it was possible to explore together with tentative answers to some of the questions that appeared to need raising if the economic condition of the ascendancy landowners is to be understood. That a great deal of further investigation is required to attain this end was the plainest conclusion reached and if what follows in any way aids such inquiry, its purpose will have been fulfilled.

The seventeenth century was a period of great changes in Ireland. There were successive transfers of land from catholic to protestant ownership; political and administrative power passed into the hands of a ‘new English’ minority. Two major attempts to reverse these trends—the confederate and Jacobite wars—proved disastrous for those who supported the legitimate monarchy. The catholic church was for much of the period on the defensive, and at the end of the century was subjected to severe legal restraints. The Irish economy was seriously affected by two wars, and the resilience that it showed in the intervals was limited by the requirements of English commercial policy.

Throughout the nineteenth century, books, pamphlets and periodicals offered widely-ranging advice to the working class. One theme, appearing about 1820, was political economy: ‘Next to religion’, a royal commission reported, ‘the knowledge most important to a labouring man is that of the causes which regulate the amount of his wages, the hours of his work, the regularity of his employment, and the prices of what he consumes’. And Richard Whately, former Drummond Professor of political economy at Oxford, now archbishop of Dublin, urged similarly the need to teach political economy to the poor : ‘The lower orders’, he said, ‘would not … be, as now, liable to the misleading of every designing demagogue … If they were well grounded in the outlines of the science, it would go further towards rendering them provident, than any other scheme that could be devised.’

Arthur O’Connor, or more correctly Conner, is now little remembered, but from 1795 to 1798 no leader of the United Irishmen had more prestige and influence than he. In England he was the darling of the Foxite whigs. In France he played a part in procuring the expedition to Bantry Bay. In Ireland he inspired and organised rebellion. He suffered nearly five years imprisonment, narrowly escaped the gallows and spent the last fifty years of his life in exile. There he was made a général de division by Napoleon, was intimate with Lafayette, Volney, and the idéologues, and married the daughter of Condorcet and niece of Grouchy. He lived through the last days of the consulate, and all of the first empire, the restoration, the hundred days, the second restoration, the July monarchy and the second republic to die tranquilly at the dawn of the second empire. An obituary notice in The Nation sang his praises.

Those who wish to put together the complete picture and story of eighteenth-century Ireland, in so far as these have been assembled in the literature of the last thirty years, will need to study many writings that lie on the periphery of the subject, or at least outside the main historiographical tradition. The scholarship seems to exist in separate layers which sometimes touch one another without quite interpenetrating; and a man may make a genuine contribution in his own field but still require to be read with a special critical alertness because he is unaware of what is happening in other fields. Important items may appear in periodicals not regularly consulted by historians.

The years 1906 to 1910 which form the chronological limits of this study bear witness to a decline in the importance of the Irish question in English politics. The nature of the legislative proposals of the liberal government during the earlier part of this period and the consequent vigorous reaction of the unionist opposition, culminating in the rejection of the budget of 1909 by the house of lords, ensured the temporary eclipse of home rule. The constitutional crisis arising out of the deadlock between the two houses of parliament continued throughout 1910 and 1911, and it is only in 1912, with the introduction of the third home rule bill, that Ireland once more assumes a pre-eminent place in English politics. The really decisive year, however, for the interpreter of the Irish policy of the unionist party is 1910.

The period 1906–14 is often regarded as one of continual disagreement and turmoil in British politics. This may be true; but it is important to understand why. In fact, British politics between 1906 and 1914 were marked by a strong desire to avoid extremes. Developments on the fringe of politics, socialism, syndicalism and suffragism, made a deep impression upon the moderate elements of both major parties and their desire to contain such signs of disturbance was epitomised in the constitutional conference held in 1910. Yet the Irish question frustrated attempts at moderation, embittered politics and hindered the development of a more representative, democratic and social stage in the United Kingdom.

In the literature of the Irish independence movement the question of a federal settlement involving the United Kingdom, and possibly the whole empire, in a grand scheme of ‘devolution’ has received relatively little attention. However, the papers of Moreton Frewen (1853–1924), now lodged in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., should add a great deal to any assessment of this aspect of the Irish Problem.

Frewen was a member of the Anglo-Irish gentry with business interests in America. He married a daughter of Leonard Jerome of New York, and was therefore an uncle of both Winston Churchill and Shane Leslie, both of whom had mothers who were Jeromes. Furthermore, his brother’s daughter became the second wife of Sir Edward Carson, and in addition to these family associations he was acquainted with the most prominent men of his generation on both sides of the Atlantic. His life was actually a series of business and political failures, but his papers hold the key to a fascinating chapter in the search for a federal solution to Ireland’s political problems, and most of what follows is based upon those papers.

The political significance of the counter-reformation papacy has continued to occupy the attention of historians ever since Ranke drew attention to it in his History of the popes during the last four centuries, first written in 1834–6 and revised slightly seven years later. Von Pastor, writing on the papacy at the end of the last century, had access to the Vatican archives and he places the political activities of the counter-reformation papacy in the general setting of post-Tridentine papal policy. His work thus acts as a corrective to that of Ranke.

After 1920, when radio became established in the United States and Europe, pessimists declared that there would be a consequent and inevitable decline in independent thinking, literature and scholarship. Undoubtedly in the beginning listeners were hypnotized by the new invention and were inclined to be passive, just as viewers of television were prone to be ‘captive’ thirty years later. But once the public had adjusted itself to the novelty of radio, it began to demand quality and to insist not merely on first-class entertainment but also on serious programmes. This demand showed its effects first in the realm of music, and in due time in that of scholarship. At the very least it may be said that radio has drawn on and benefited from academic learning. It can be argued that it has also stimulated scholarship, and this has certainly proved to be the case with the Thomas Davis Lectures, which have been transmitted regularly from Radio Éireann since 1953.

The Maynooth question, which occupied so much public attention in 1845—which Harriet Martineau remarked was ‘the great political controversy of the year, the subject on which society seemed to be going mad’—in fact comprised several issues of unequal significance. As a political question, it lurched the conservative party to the point of grave division; it was a dress-rehearsal for the corn law split in the following year. It was also an incident in the Irish policy of the great Peel ministry, a part of the general reconstitution of higher education in Ireland, and an attempt, together with the charitable bequests act and the creation of the Queen’s Colleges, to conciliate moderate catholic opinion and syphon off some quantity of O’Connell’s abundant support.