Petitioning, either as a general call for favour and assistance, or as the opening salvo in a legal action, was a common process in the Irish Parliament and there is strong evidence that it took up a considerable amount of time, frequently much more than legislation did. This chapter considers both the theory and practice of petitioning. It discusses how and why it happened, the methodology and materials of the process, the role of counsel, officers, and members. It also provides the statistical evidence of how the system worked and to what extent certain petitioners and types of petitions were more successful than others.

Initially, this chapter discusses the position of the Irish Parliament within early modern Irish historiography and whether it has served Irish institutional history well. This is followed by a consideration of the development of parliamentary history in England, and whether there is a potential usefulness of applying such a historiographical model to Ireland. It also considers how an institutional history of the Irish Parliament might be written and to what extent this can be achieved, considering to what extent the relevant source material is available to us. The day-to-day records of the two houses, the parliamentary journals, are discussed in great detail – their original purpose and to what extent they might direct such an institutional study.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores how depoliticisation of Northern Irish society is occurring at the level of everyday life in Northern Ireland. It examines how it is being resisted and how, in spite of the apparent enshrinement of an unquestioning acceptance of the benevolence of the current political leaders, a politics of normality is emerging from the years of conflict. The book explores the argument that conflict management should mean more than simply security-based or violence-related initiatives; rather, a 'sustainable peace is dependent on the political, economic and social choices which the relative absence of violence allows'. It also explores the role of integrated education in breaking down residual sectarianism in Northern Ireland. The book focuses on women's involvement or women's marginalisation in society and politics.

This chapter presents a concept of an evangelical subculture to explore how both the politics of the post-Agreement period, as well as more mundane, everyday concerns about God, faith and life, have helped shape changes in evangelicals' personal religious practices and identities. In Northern Ireland, evangelicals have maintained much higher rates of church attendance, with up to four-fifths attending services at least once a week. Evangelicals repeatedly tell their testimonies to one other, formally and informally, so telling conversion stories is central to the evangelical subculture. Most evangelical churches offer a staggering variety of social activities. People have the opportunity to participate in something nearly every day of the week. The chapter outlines the ways in which post-Agreement politics have affected evangelicals' religious journeys.

The two constituent parts of parliament were generally self-regulating in their behaviour. With the exception of statute law that did stipulate certain ways for parliament to behave, the Commons and the Lords organised the way they undertook their business and how their members should conduct themselves. This meant that parliamentary privilege for the member and the liberties of each house were jealously guarded. These were certain rights to avoid arrest, to be free from civil actions, and also for the house to dominate certain areas, for example appellate oversight of other courts or finance. The author convincingly asserts that while privilege could well be the domain of the petty and self-interested, its fundamental purpose was to preserve the individual roles and promote their smooth running.

This chapter assesses the legal power of wives, midwives and mothers in the legal regimes of Anglo-America. Though under coverture, wives clearly had a right to petition the courts to compel neglectful husbands to provide them with financial maintenance. Husbands had a patriarchal responsibility to provide for their wives and children, and magistrates had an interest in holding men accountable to their obligations to care for their families. Laws regarding divorce and marital separation differed by location. In England and the southern colonies, especially the Chesapeake and South Carolina, authorities granted full divorces in very few instances. In the New England colonies, however, magistrates permitted couples who could not live harmoniously together to divorce, an agreement which negated any obligation of the husband to provide for his wife. Remarkably, in cases of illegitimacy in all areas of the Anglo-American world, a man who fathered children out of wedlock still had a patriarchal responsibility to provide financial support to his family. Mothers of these children, often supported by midwives, could legally claim financial support from the men they named as the father of their children, even if the fathers denied the women’s accusations.

This chapter provides an overview of the major arguments in the book and maps out how women’s relationship to the law changed in England and colonial America under different legal jurisdictions. It presents the argument that the law increasingly replaced patriarchy as the governing ideology of family and social relationships. It discusses the opportunities and limitations of using legal records as a source of historical evidence, and assesses how the work contributes to our understanding of women in the early modern period.

Research on the practice of segregation and sectarianism in Northern Ireland has taken two main forms: anthropological and geographical. The aim of the research was to explore the extent to which people's daily routines were affected by the social divisions within Northern Ireland, by the often extensive segregation of Catholic and Protestant communities, by sectarianism and by the legacy of the conflict. The impact of the Troubles on the research areas in Belfast was very different and had a significant impact on the degree to which segregation and sectarianism were felt to impose themselves on daily routines. Little consideration has been given to exactly how economic regeneration may contribute to breaking down divisions and segregation but there is some indication from this research that economic regeneration can have an impact on a personal level.