The runaway British slave who called himself Patricius tells us in this Confession that on making land after his escape from Ireland the and the ship’s crew had to journey for twenty-eight days before coming across any other human beings. Bury (Life of St Patrick, London, 1905) offered the explanation that they must have found themselves in a part of Gaul which had just been devastated by the Vandals, who burst into the west in the first days of 407. The idea was tempting. The date 407, combined with 431 (the year which is known from Prosper’s contemporary chronicle to have been that in which Pope Celestine sent Palladius as ‘first bishop’ to the Irish Christians), not only gave a fairly firm chronological anchorage to Patrick’s career, but also forged for him an early link with the continent, whence, according to his seventh-century Irish biographers, Muirchú and Tírechán, he ultimately returned to Ireland as successor to Palladius.

The 1970s was a time of crisis internationally, when governments struggled to cope with rising inflation and public indebtedness in the aftermath of the first oil shock. It was also a period of social change, of demands for divorce and abortion, and second-wave feminism campaigned for greater rights for women. But as many of the contributors to The shock of the global have shown, amidst the political, social and economic turmoil, there was development and transformation. Ireland was not isolated from many of these trends that marked the 1970s. This article is concerned with the Fine Gael–Labour government of 1973 to 1977, in particular with the social reform agenda pursued by a coalition of one party (Fine Gael) that had advocated a ‘Just Society’ in the 1960s, and another (Labour) that had declared that the seventies would be socialist. They presented themselves at the 1973 general election as the socially progressive parties in the political system, attempting to outflank Fianna Fáil, which, in contrast, emphasised the Northern Ireland security question during the campaign. As the National Coalition grappled with fiscal expansion and the effects of stagflation, important changes occurred in the realm of social policy. Legislation affecting the status of women, recognising female heads of household and offering support to families of physically and mentally disabled children were all indicators of change.

The history of Poynings’ Law is complex and multifaceted. Much has been written about it, at times with the end result being a recognition that to investigate Poynings’ Law is to venture into a quagmire. At the same time, a number of important works have been published over the years that throw light upon specific periods in the history of that law. Until recently much of the focus has been on the period stretching from the passage of the law in 1494-5 up to 1641, with some significant excursions into the eighteenth-century history of the law.

The Irish Race Conference met in Paris at the end of January 1922 to initiate a new world organisation that would link the people of Ireland with their cousins around the globe. The gathering of delegates attracted comment wherever the Irish had settled, and even the Belfast Telegraph noted its opening ceremonies. The South African Irish newspaper, The Republic, heralded the conference as a ‘family reunion on a world wide scale’, but, like many family gatherings, disagreement was to follow in its wake. The idea of a conference was first mooted in February 1921 by the Irish Republican Association of South Africa (I.R.A.S.A.), to support the efforts then being made to win international recognition for an independent Irish republic. However, the I.R.A.S.A. did not see its work stopping there, envisaging the creation of a worldwide organisation that would link the Irish overseas with their compatriots at home. Over the following months the idea was developed into plans for an Irish International that would pursue a programme of social, cultural and economic objectives in Ireland and abroad. As The Republic explained,

Just how such wide-ranging aims were to be realised would prove a matter of dissent among delegates when they assembled twelve months later in Paris. But in February 1921 the proposal inspired only enthusiasm and hope for the future.

The idea of the conference was a product of the belief prevalent at the time that the Irish had ‘yet to give to the world the best which is in them’. The official programme for the new race organisation captured this sentiment, declaring the organisers’ belief that ‘Ireland has much to give to the world’. It was widely expected that this potential would be realised once the Irish were free to govern themselves. It is thus ironic that it was ultimately over the relationship between the new Irish government and the overseas Irish that the conference, and all its worthy ambitions, would founder.

Corporatism or vocationalism had many advocates throughout Europe in the 1930s. Corporatists rejected the extremes of laissez-faire capitalism, with its attendant exploitation of workers, and totalitarian communism, with its emphasis on the doctrine of class struggle. They recommended a middle way between two hostile systems and sought to achieve social harmony by means of the establishment of corporations, representative of workers and employers, to regulate the various areas of national economic activity. These corporations were to secure co-operation between capital and labour, thus eliminating social conflict. In Ireland vocationalism had been popularised by the papal encyclical Quadragesimo anno, and it had strong proponents among certain elements in Fine Gael and the Blueshirts while both were under the leadership of General Eoin O’Duffy in 1933 and 1934. The spectacular failure of the Blueshirts and O’Duffy’s incompetence as Fine Gael leader resulted in the corporate-inspired Labour policy of Fine Gael, published in 1934, being ignored by historians. Yet it is worthy of attention, not least because it was the only significant policy formulation by vocationalists within Fine Gael. Furthermore, an examination of the proposals serves to illuminate reasons why corporatism and the Blueshirts were doomed to political failure.

The evangelical revival of 1859 remains a pivotal event in the religious culture of Ulster Protestants owing to its legacy of widespread conversion, church renewal, and its role in shaping the pan-Protestantism of Ulster society that later opposed Irish home rule. Being part of a wider transatlantic movement of religious awakening, the 1859 revival was seen as the culmination of thirty years of evangelical renewal within Irish Presbyterianism. What has often been overlooked, however, is the fact that many aspects of the revival were deeply troubling to orthodox Presbyterians. Although most Ulster Presbyterians were largely supportive of the movement, an intellectually significant minority dissented from what they saw as its spectacular, doctrinal, liturgical, ecclesiological, and moral aberrations. Given 1859’s mythological status among Ulster evangelicals, it is normally assumed that all who opposed the revival were either religious formalists or those of heterodox doctrinal opinions. It will be argued that such an assumption is deeply misguided, and that the Presbyterian opponents of 1859 were motivated by zeal for confessional Reformed theology and Presbyterian church-order. By focusing on theologically conservative opposition to an ostensible evangelical and Calvinistic awakening, this article represents a significant contribution to the existing historiography of not only the Ulster revival but of religious revivalism more generally. It also helps us to understand the long-term evolution of Ulster Presbyterian belief and practice in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Acts of pains and penalties are an antique form of criminal action, related (but as a small brother, so to speak) to acts of attainder. Both consisted of bills directed against an individual, and passed by king, lords and commons, in contradistinction to impeachment, where the commons acted as accusers and the lords as sole judges in the case. Whereas, however, attainder was confined to cases of treason and felony and carried the death penalty, pains and penalties also covered conduct tending to grave public mischief and were attended by lesser punishments. The first acts of pains and penalties noticed in the legal textbooks belong to the thirteenth century, and generally concern fugitives domiciled abroad, the last belong to the 1720s and 1730s and cover a wide range of political or quasi-political offences. The Layers conspiracy, the South Sea Bubble scandal and the Porteous riots all ended in this form of punitive legislation.

In 1930 the Bristol Record Society printed as the first volume of their Publications the complete text of Bristol’s earliest charters from 1155 to 1373. The text was prepared by the city archivist, Miss N. Dermott Harding, who was also responsible for a full translation of each document, and an accurate description of the various ancient records and documents from which the text was taken. But there was no attempt at an adequate historical survey of all this material. A second volume was planned which should carry the story down to the end of the medieval period, and Miss Harding ended her short introduction with the remark : ‘[This] is in no sense an exhaustive book of reference on the documents it contains. It is, literally, a bare text-book, providing, without other comment than the technical work of transcription required, a printed substitute for manuscript material. Research upon it is left for the users of the text, in the hope that they may find it a reliable and accurate basis for their work, saving them the task of difficult and troublesome search through the originals.’

The organization of the medieval Anglo-Irish lordship was designed to reproduce as exactly as possible the administrative system of England, but it was not introduced suddenly or all at once. Of the eleven shires which were governed by royal sheriffs at the end of the thirteenth century, Dublin is the only one which can be traced back to the twelfth century, and even then does not appear in the records till the 1190’s. It seems probable that at this date no other shire yet existed in Ireland, though it is possible that Waterford, with Cork, was already organized as a shire.

Irish transportation to the English colonies during the interregnum has often been represented as an indictment of English policy. John Lynch, the Irish historian, who was driven into exile during the protectorate, writing shortly after the restoration, deplored that Irishmen had been torn from the arms of their wives and children by ‘civic vultures’, transported, and sold as slaves in the West Indies. Among more recent writers, though Bagwell and Gardiner point out that the transported Irish became, not slaves, but indentured servants, Prendergast criticizes the ‘English slave-dealers’ and asserts that ‘Ireland must have exhibited scenes in every part like the slave hunts in Africa’.

‘Since our foundation, the S.D.L.P. has been proudly nationalist and is 100 per cent for a United Ireland.’ This description, from the website of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (S.D.L.P.), advances a claim which might be thought not to sit easy with the party's founding ideals which claimed it as a ‘radical socialist party’ and insisted that, while a united Ireland was one of the party's main aims, it would prioritise the socio-economic above the constitutional question. This article will argue that while the S.D.L.P. was widely recognised as a major advance in nationalist politics in Northern Ireland when it was formed in August 1970, it had lost its avant-garde approach to the constitutional question and become a more organised form of the old Nationalist Party by 1975. Although initially the S.D.L.P. combined socialist rhetoric with a discourse that linked social justice with the reunification of the island – its ideal was a ‘completely new constitution for the whole of Ireland, a constitution which will provide the framework for the emergence of a just, egalitarian and secular society’ – there existed an uneasy tension between nationalist and socialist aims within the party, with the former taking precedence by the time of the powersharing Executive of 1974.

Among the abuses experienced by children in Ireland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, kidnapping and stripping stand out both for what they reveal of the changing nature of the manner in which children were preyed upon and contemporary attitudes to children and child welfare. Though it is misleadingly presented as evidence of the existence of a vibrant trade in ‘white slaves’, children were not only kidnapped so they could be ‘sold’ in the crown’s Caribbean and American colonies. They were also targeted domestically for a variety of pursuits in which children laboured – among which begging and chimney sweeping stand out. In any event, the diminished visibility of child kidnapping after the 1780s suggests it was not pursued actively thereafter. Children continued to be targeted, but the primary object of those who did so was to strip them of the clothes and jewellery they wore in order to realise the monetary value of these goods. Pursued primarily by female offenders, the fact that a majority of the reported incidents occurred in Dublin, Belfast, Limerick and Cork indicates that it was first and foremost an urban crime. Its identification attests both to the vulnerability of children to exploitation, and to the active engagement of adults in that exploitation.

Few Irish men and women can have escaped the mighty wave of anniversary fever which broke over the island in the spring of 1998. As if atoning for the failed rebellion itself, the bicentenary of 1798 was neither ill-coordinated nor localised, but a genuinely national phenomenon produced by years of planning and organisation. Emissaries were dispatched from Dublin and Belfast to remote rural communities, and the resonant names of Bartlett, Whelan, Keogh and Graham were heard throughout the land; indeed, the commemoration possessed an international dimension which stretched to Boston, New York, Toronto, Liverpool, London and Glasgow. In bicentenary Wexford — complete with ’98 Heritage Trail and ’98 Village — the values of democracy and pluralism were triumphantly proclaimed. When the time came, the north did not hesitate, but participated enthusiastically. Even the French arrived on cue, this time on bicycle. Just as the 1898 centenary, which contributed to the revitalisation of physical-force nationalism, has now become an established subject in its own right, future historians will surely scrutinise this mother of all anniversaries for evidence concerning the national pulse in the era of the Celtic Tiger and the Good Friday Agreement. In the meantime a survey of some of the many essay collections and monographs published during the bicentenary will permit us to hazard a few generalisations about the current direction of what might now be termed ‘Ninety-Eight Studies’.