Whitley Stokes, the editor of the Annals attributed to Tigernach, had once the audacity to say that many, perhaps most, of the dates of our Annals are erroneous, and that the amount of error in each case is not very important. To those who are qualified to study the evidence, it will be apparent that this is not the case, and that so far from the various collections differing in chronology from one another, they are in remarkable unanimity back to about the middle of the seventh century. There is great ignorance prevalent on the relations of our Irish chronicles to one another, and there is room for a thorough study of their criteria such as I now propose’ to sketch from a distance. A definite chronology if attainable is the first essential for knowledge of our past. If it be not certainly available, then we should have the nearest possible approximation to exact dating.

The act of the Irish parliament of 1494-5, known as Poynings’ Law, was of outstanding importance in the history of that parliament down to its virtual repeal in 1782, but, owing to the brevity of its text, the changing nature of the relations between the English government and the Anglo-Irish administration and the development of the organisation of the Irish parliament, it passed through various stages of interpretation and significance which require to be studied separately.

The earliest event of Irish history that bears a well authenticated date is the mission of Palladius to Ireland in A.D. 431. The record of this year is found in the contemporary chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine. In another work written a few years later. Prosper writes of the institution of a christian church in Ireland by Pope Celestine, who died in 432. All the early Irish sources agree in dating the mission of Patrick in 432.

Seven years later, the Annals of Ulster and the Annals of Inisfallen have the entry, derived from an earlier common source: ‘ Secundinus, Auxilius, et Iseminus mittuntur in Hiberniam in auxilium Patricii ’ A short tract copied in the Book of Armagh and dating probably, like the other documents in the same collection, from about 700, tells that Auxilius and Iserninus were sent by Germanus. It is silent regarding Secundinus.

The warfare in Ireland from 1593 to 1601 involved vital issues for both English and Irish. In many respects it was a unique conflict; certainly the opposing forces of the two countries were never so nearly balanced, and Kinsale is the major battle, all the potentialities and consequences of the occasion considered, in our history.

Over a century ago the Rev. Charles O'Conor published in his corpus of Irish historical writers a collection of annals, the authorship of which he ascribed to a certain Tigernach ua Braein, abbot of Clonmacnois, who died in the year 1088. This ascription O'Conor apparently adopted from Sir James Ware, and it is not unlikely that Ware took it from the learned Irish scholar Dubhaltach mac Firbhisigh who was in Ware's employment. Mac Firbhisigh probably had good reason for describing Tigernach as abbot of Roscommon as well as of Clonmacnois. There had been for centuries a close connexion between the two monasteries, and both were favoured with the protection of the kings of Connacht. For the rest, government of more than one monastic community by the same individual was quite common. Ua Braein was one of the family names of the sept of Clann Murchada, which is mentioned several times in the Irish annals and elsewhere.

One of the initial problems raised for England by the outbreak of Anglo-American hostilities in 1775, was that of ensuring an adequate supply of provisions for the English naval and military forces, that had to be dispatched to, and maintained in, America. Confronted with this problem, Lord North's government inevitably focussed attention on Ireland's provision supply.

The feud between the Talbot and Ormond interests, which dominates Anglo-Irish history from about 1414 to 1447, is of interest chiefly as an illustration of the final stage in the collapse of a government, and as affording a striking instance of that parallelism which can often be observed between English and Anglo-Irish history. In both cases the period is marked by the relapse of politics into mere faction and the corresponding decline of the institutions of government in estimation and effectiveness. In Ireland this decline is even more marked than in England, lacking, as it does, the more cheerful colours of rapid commercial progress to lighten the dark picture of political decadence. In Ireland the feuds and factions of the early fifteenth century, connected with the personalities of Sir John Talbot and the fourth earl of Ormond, brought the government to such a pitch of disorder that by the beginning of the Tudor period thorough reorganization was necessary.

Arthur Young's judgment on Irish roads is well known; that indefatigable traveller who had many hard words for the highways of his native country, asserted: ‘ For a country so very far behind us as Ireland, to have got suddenly so much the start of us in the article of roads, is a spectacle that cannot fail to strike the English traveller exceedingly ’ A quarter of a century later his views received general corroboration from the statistical surveys of the counties and from other commentaries and travel-journals of the time. Sampson, who found little to criticise in the county Derry roads, remarked: ‘ I have seen no country more intersected by good roads than the neighbourhood of Kilrea and Magherafelt’.

One of the most noticeable features of Irish political life in the 'later eighteenth century, is, that though political power was :oncentrated in comparatively few hands, there was a very large leasure of political freedom. One could in fact sum up the system by saying that it was oligarchy tempered by discussion. As a result, voluntary and unofficial societies and clubs arose for the purpose of educating and influencing public opinion, and were the nuclei of much political thought and action. There [were Whig Clubs, Constitutional Clubs, Societies for the [Preservation of Liberty and Peace and Associations of Independent Voters. Thus there was nothing very strange in the Iformation, in November 1791, of a Dublin branch of the newly bounded Society of United Irishmen. But this group was to prove unique in at least one respect.

Daniel O'Neill united in his person the two main branches of a great family. His father, Con, son of Niall, son of Brian Fagartach O'Neill, was lord of Upper Clandeboy; his mother Ellis (a sister of Eoghan Ruadh) belonged to the O'Neills of Tyrone. Daniel was born in Clandeboy early in the seventeenth century. His father died while he was a minor, and he was brought up a protestant, and, it is stated, a ward in chancery in England. He served his apprenticeship to arms with the English regiments in the Netherlands, and at an early age became familiar with the life both of camp and court. He was endowed with many natural advantages: a pleasing appearance and engaging manners, great fertility of resource, and an aptitude for handling difficult men and situations with a finesse which earned for him the name of ‘Infallible Subtle’.

The difficulties and problems which the revolution of 1688 presented to people of tender conscience were, in England, smoothed over and covered by circumstances. The king’s flight left the tories free to frame, at least for their own consumption, a theory which secured to them the benefits of revolution without the sin of rebellion. The anglican church itself, than which no institution had more openly maintained the doctrine of non-resistance, found that the accomplished fact could be accepted with a face-saving show of consistency; even the moral and intellectual eminence of the non-jurors failed to secure more than a handful of followers for their schism.

The enactment, by the Irish parliament of 1494-5, of the measure later known as Poynings' Law had far-reaching effects upon the whole subsequent course of Irish parliamentary history to 1782. Poynings' Law was the foundation-stone of a peculiar system of legislative procedure which made it impossible for the Irish parliament to develop on parallel lines with the parliament of England. It prescribed conditions to be observed by the Irish executive, with regard to the summoning and proceedings of the legislature, which were seldom satisfactory to both parties at the same time, and resulted in protracted attempts by each in turn to have the law altered in accordance with changes in their own character, circumstances and interests. The function and interpretation of the law passed through a number of distinct phases, and it was only in the later phases that it came to be regarded as a hated symbol of the subordination of the Irish parliament.