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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2016
Geoffrey Henry Browne, third Baron Oranmore and Browne, K.P., P.C., cannot have had publication in mind when he penned his journal; many entries are too personal. He chronicled the progress of his children, Dominick, Kathleen and Geoffrey, detailing their childhood ailments without even drawing a veil over a tonsillectomy on the kitchen table. Of recurrent concern was the health of his wife, Onie. It is a private document, written with evident candour. Much of it properly concerns only the Browne family. However, there is a seam, rich in Anglo-Irish politics, which runs throughout the journal and which merits a wider audience. In selecting passages for publication, I have attempted to mine this seam faithfully if concisely, retaining a limited measure of anecdote and human interest in order to illuminate Oranmore’s attitudes as a southern Unionist, for this apella-tion can have the resonance of an oxymoron to modern ears.
1 Each entry starts with the date on which he was writing. He wrote in ink in bound exercise books of lined paper, measuring aproximately 18cm X 23cm.Three volumes cover the period: volume X: March 1910 - January 1919; volume Y: February 1919 - March 1923; volume Z: March 1923 - May 1927.
2 See LordOranmore, and Browne, , ‘The Brownes of Castle MacGarrett’ in Galway Arch. Soc. Jn., no. 1 (1907-8),pp 48–59 Google Scholar.
3 Many of his letters are preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. See in particular box 21 of the Irish deposit of the papers of the 4th earl of Clarendon, used by Montague, Robert J. in ‘Relief and reconstruction in Ireland, 1845–9’ (unpublished D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1976)Google Scholar.
4 Edward Ponsonby, 8th earl of Bessborough (1851-1920).
5 Journal entries for 8 May 1910,30 July 1911, 17 Nov. 1912.
6 See journal entries for 30 Nov. 1913, 17 Mar. 1920.
7 Conservative M.P., 1880–1906; secretary of state for war, 1900–03; for India, 1903–5; succeeded as Viscount Midleton, 1907; created 1 st earl of Midleton, 1920.
8 Quoted in Buckland, Patrick, Irish Unionism I: The Anglo-Irish and the new Ireland, 1885–1922 (Dublin, 1972), p. 44 Google Scholar. Buckland attributes Oranmore’s sympathetic attitude to the imperatives of war.
9 Hamilton John Agmondesham Cuffe, 5th earl of Desart (1848-1934). Desart, who had served on the International Court of Arbitration at The Hague, had a noted ‘talent for compromise and conciliation’ ( Bence-Jones, Mark, Twilight of the ascendancy (London, 1987), p. 183)Google Scholar.
10 Quoted in Buckland, Irish Unionism 1, pp 101–2.
11 Joseph Devlin (1872-1934). A leading northern nationalist; M.P. at Westminster, 1902–22, 1929–34, and in the Northern Ireland parliament, 1921–34.
12 See Oranmore’s speech in the House of Lords during the debate on the Government of Ireland Bill, 1920 (Hansard 5 (Lords), xlii, 470–71 (23 Nov. 1920)).
13 Buckland, Irish Unionism I, p. 102.
14 Cooper, Diana, The rainbow comes and goes (London, 1958), p. 155.Google Scholar
15 McDowell, R.B., The Irish Convention, 1917–18 (London, 1970), p. 176.Google Scholar
16 Earl of Midleton, , Records and reactions, 1856–1939 (London, 1939)Google Scholar.
17 Buckland, Irish Unionism 1, p. 270.
18 Oranmore spoke on the subject in the House of Lords (Hansard 5 (Lords), lxvi, 723–6 (23 Mar. 1927)). The topic may appear esoteric, but the journal contains evidence supporting the contention that since 1924 the parliament of the United Kingdom has been constituted contrary to statute law.
19 I wish to acknowledge the help and hospitality of Dominick, 4th Lord Oranmore and Browne, who today can still remember his father and the events of the 1920s with extraordinary clarity, and by whose kind permission these extracts are published. I am grateful to Professor Roy Foster for encouragement and for introducing me to Irish Historical Studies; to Professor R.B. McDowell and Professor Patrick Collinson; to Dr Keith Jeffery, and Ruth Menary of the Northern Ireland Assembly Library, for help with the footnotes; and to Pauline Knox for typing my manuscript.