This collection of eleven articles, introduced and edited by Hiram Morgan, grew from a seminar on political ideology in the hundred years covering the second half of the sixteenth century and the pre-Cromwellian half of the seventeenth, that he directed at the Folger Institute, Washington DC, in 1995. His introductory essay ‘Beyond Spenser?’ takes the … Read more
Sean Connolly opens this volume, the third in the Folger Institute series, with a quotation from R.B. McDowell’s Irish Public Opinion, 1750-1800 (1944). Remarkably and regrettably it is only within the last decade or so that scholars have begun building on the ground broken by McDowell over half a century ago, and for that reason … Read more
This volume on political thought in and concerning Ireland, is one of three resulting from a series of seminars convened at the Folger Institute under the aegis of John Pocock, which, regrettably, have not been published by the same press. The present volume, treating of the years pre-1641 to 1700, has four principal strengths. First, … Read more
On 20 August 1936, Éamon de Valera received ‘A Plan for a basic constitutional law and an Initial Version of a Draft’ from a legal adviser in the Department of External Affairs, John Hearne. That document marked the genesis of Bunreacht na hÉireann. By October 1936 the ‘plan’ had grown to seventy-eight articles and other … Read more
My most vivid memory of Northern Ireland remains the police stations in West Belfast. I was familiar from newspaper and television coverage with the murals and graffiti splashed walls that describe the depths of the loyalties and hatreds that have plagued that region. But it was the sight of police officers peering through wire-mesh and … Read more