In the present article I shall not discuss fully the question of Patrician chronology. I shall merely offer some remarks on fifth century entries in the Irish annals which attracted my attention during a recent study of the chronology of St Patrick. After the labours of MacCarthy, Burp and O’Rahilly we are at last In a position to ask the relevant questions, even if we cannot always give a satisfactory answer. Yet as regards detail, much confusion remains to be disentangled; perhaps the following suggestions will be found helpful towards a final clarification.

Europe in the seventeenth century was a land of mar and confusion because the great political problems raised by the religious disruption of the preceding century had not yet been solved. Chief among these was the problem of the relations between the Roman catholic church and a protestant state. The teaching of the pope's indirect power in temporal matters in any problem involving a breach of the moral order (ratione peccati) had been strongly re-stated by Bellarmine, and was the official attitude of the church. A protestant prince had committed a grave sin, that of heresy, and so it was the pope's right and duty to depose him and absolve his Catholic subjects from their allegiance. But this political theory was becoming impractical as the seventeenth century progressively demonstrated that Europe was permanently divided. As might be expected, juridical forms lagged behind the development of events; but by the middle of the century the Roman curia, while not prepared to give antecedent approval to a peace with protestants, might be said to be ready to acquiesce once it had been concluded, if the position and rights of the Catholic church could be assured. Yet this assurance was, in the circumstances, almost impossible. The Catholic church could not rest satisfied with toleration as a sect, but demanded recognition as an organised society with a source of jurisdiction illdependent of the state.

In attempting to determine the medical nature of the various widespread diseases recorded by the Irish chroniclers, my procedure has been to collate the accounts given in the several annals, thus securing the maximum amount of information obtainable about each outbreak. In making these comparisons it was distressing to come across some isolated and incomprehensible statement, clearly a relic of what was once a fuller description but now curtailed through the arbitrary omission of details which the early transcribers did not understand. Where Ireland was involved in a more generalized epidemic, it was sometimes possible to supplement a meagre native account by drawing on subject matter recorded elsewhere. For example, little could be made of the Irish entries of the pestilence of 664, were it not for the story of its course in England which we owe to the Venerable Bede. These assembled data were studied in the light of present medical knowledge, aided materially in many instances by my own experience of the diseases concerned. In such ways it has proved possible to give a firm and I believe a correct opinion on the identity of some of the pestilences. In other instances, no more can be done than to suggest some probability; and if even this is impossible because of insufficient data, such evidence as there may be is presented for consideration, even though the problem is left unsolved.

The passing of the land act of 1903 had been in large part due to the success of the conference held in Ireland during the previous winter between representatives of Irish unionists and nationalists. The chairman of the conference, Lord Dunraven, had been one of the most prominent of the unionist advocates of a conciliatory policy and, after the initial work of the conference had been accomplished, he was reluctant to abandon the instrument for good which had been fashioned during the preceding six months. Supporting him at the conference had been a group of other unionist landlords with views similar to his own; they became known as the Land Committee, and they were to form the nucleus of a new organisation which Lord Dunraven had already in mind. This group was independent of party ties, for, if it contained no nationalist members, it was also frowned upon by the official unionist body, the Landowners' Convention.

While in Ireland as chief secretary (1812–18) Sir Robert Peel became acquainted with William Shaw Mason, the Irish topographer and statistician who was remembrancer or receiver of the first-fruits or twentieth parts in Ireland and secretary to the commissioners for public records. Impressed with Mason's work and abilities, Peel encouraged him to prepare a major statistical survey of Ireland, along the lines of Sir John Sinclair's famous survey of Scotland; and the result was the three-volume work entitled A statistical account, or parochial survey of Ireland, drawn up from the communications of the clergy (the three volumes were published in 1814, 1816, and 1819 respectively), which is still a valuable record of the period. In 1819 Mason compiled a Survep, valuation, and census of the barony of Portnehinch in Queen's County. Published in 1821, this work was submitted to George IV during the royal visit to Ireland in that year ‘as a model for a statistical survey of the whole country’.