Between the summer of 1770 and the close of the year 1772, large areas of rural Ulster were rendered ungovernable by the activities of the Hearts of Steel or Steelboys. Agrarian agitation was not new, of course — during 1763 Tyrone, Armagh and Mormghan had been similarly affected by the Oakboys — but apart from the more serious and more prolonged nature of the Hearts of Steel outbreak, which gave it a notoriety and importance of its own, and the curious fact that the agitators were presbyterians, it had this unique feature: its outbreak and the heavy emigration which followed its spread and suppression were almost universally ascribed to the wicked greed of a single great landowner, the fifth earl (later first marquis) of Donegall.

Controversy has always surrounded the Irish policy of Lord Randolph Churchill. In particular, he played an important part in opposing Gladstone’s home rule bill of 1886, when he ‘played the Orange card’. But despite this episode there has been much varied speculation about his real attitude towards home rule. Was he a sincere and consistent opponent of home rule, as his son and his friend, Rosebery, claimed, or was he, as Wilfred Blunt alleged, a secret sympathiser with home rule? Alternatively, did Churchill merely adopt an opportunist attitude towards home rule as Robert Rhodes James has implied? In their recent book, entitled The Governing Passion, A. B. Cooke and J. R. Vincent have produced a new and idiosyncratic interpretation of Churchill’s involvement with Ireland and home rule in the period 1885-6. The purpose of this enquiry is to re-examine these interpretations, especially Cooke and Vincent’s.

The general election of 1922 was the first election to be held in the independent Irish state, the first held under the PR electoral system, and the first to be contested by the parties which, in modified forms, were to dominate subsequent Irish politics. The 1918 election, at which Sinn Féin had routed the Irish parliamentary party, had been the last of the old order. The 1922 election was the first of the new order — the two wings of Sinn Féin were challenged by Labour and other interests, as was to be the pattern for the next fifty years at least. In that light, this paper represents an attempt to start the scarcely-begun task of closely analysing modern Irish elections. Furthermore, the 1922 election merits attention because of the unusual circumstances under which it was held, foremost among which was the ‘pact’ between Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera.

History has an attraction for the amateur as well as for the professional, and though the attraction may be of a similar kind, the amateur is rarely given access to primary sources. Yet it is from these that history is written and fundamentally experienced. Giraldus Gambrensis (1146-1223) wrote about Ireland and his native Wales in the late twelfth century in such a fashion that his works can be read with pleasure, profit and, if correctly presented, understanding by both amateur and professional. Most of his works have been available to professional historians for a century in the edition published in the Rolls Series; the rest of his works have been edited since then. Yet surprisingly, rather little use was made of them until very recently. Only over the past decade has the work of this colourful and controversial individual attracted more than passing attention.