The regulation and taxation of Irish trade under the Tudors have strong but neglected claims on the attention of the Irish historian. Their obvious relevance to the economic activities of the country and, in particular, its seaborne trade will only incidentally be discussed here. Dr Longfield’s pioneer account of Anglo-Irish trade has at length been followed up by more systematic explorations of her chief sources, the English and Welsh port books and customs accounts, and a definitive treatment of this sector is surely not far distant. Even here, however, where an enviable amount of solid information is available—despite their incompleteness and familiar problems of interpreting the port books—no one seems to have asked why Irish historians have to use non-Irish sources.

The G.A.A. was founded as a consequence of an article, ‘A word about Irish athletics’, that appeared in United Ireland on 11 October 1884. The writer, almost certainly Michael Cusack, a Dublin teacher, bewailed the fact that traditional Irish games had been abandoned because of English rule : ‘the hated and hitherto dominant race drove the Irish people from their trysting places at the cross-roads and hurling-fields back to their cabins’; the Irish had become effete, pursuing fripperies and fashion, or, if they still practised athletics, did so under the control of an alien English Amateur Athletic Association where the main objective was to degrade the Irish by forcing them to compete in, and be defeated at, sports unfamiliar to them. The remedy was for ‘the Irish people to take the management of their games into their own hands’.

This selected document was forwarded to Sir William Cecil in March 1571, but it was probably composed some years previously, and almost certainly before the Irish parliament of 1569–71 had assembled. It is transcribed from a copy, bearing the name of Secretary Thomas Wilson, which survives among the State Papers, Ireland in the Public Record Office, London (S.P 63, vol. 31, no. 32, ff 73–117). The piece is considered worthy of presentation because it is the most comprehensive analysis of the social and political condition of sixteenth century Ireland made by an Irish-born contemporary; because it indicates how the author’s perception of the world differed from that of the majority of Englishmen who commented on Ireland; and because it can be established that White’s opinions were shared by other articulate people within the Pale. The document, which is disposed of in nine lines in the Calendar of state papers Ireland, 1509–73, also serves to illustrate how grossly inadequate is that series for the sixteenth century.