Dr Terence Ranger in a stimulating and valuable article on Strafford in Ireland has taken the story of the Byrnes’ country as an example of ‘the combination of cunning, idealism and self-interest which characterised Strafford’s methods …’. He claims that ‘the truth is more complex and more interesting’ than others who have ‘not unravelled the full story’ supposed. Dr Ranger’s version of the truth has been completely endorsed, elegantly summarised and widely circulated by Miss Wedgwood.It will be contended that Dr Ranger has not unravelled the full story of an episode, which in some respects still defies unravelling, and that he has unwittingly misrepresented Strafford’s part in it. A fuller account, however inconclusive, may be of value, if it gives more accurate information about Strafford’s income from Irish land and about one episode in his policy of plantation.

My prime concern in approaching this subject was to discover, if possible, some precise facts about the finances of the landowning class in what is generally accounted to have been their years of greatest affluence. This article is in effect a report on such sources of information as it was possible to explore together with tentative answers to some of the questions that appeared to need raising if the economic condition of the ascendancy landowners is to be understood. That a great deal of further investigation is required to attain this end was the plainest conclusion reached and if what follows in any way aids such inquiry, its purpose will have been fulfilled.

Arthur O’Connor, or more correctly Conner, is now little remembered, but from 1795 to 1798 no leader of the United Irishmen had more prestige and influence than he. In England he was the darling of the Foxite whigs. In France he played a part in procuring the expedition to Bantry Bay. In Ireland he inspired and organised rebellion. He suffered nearly five years imprisonment, narrowly escaped the gallows and spent the last fifty years of his life in exile. There he was made a général de division by Napoleon, was intimate with Lafayette, Volney, and the idéologues, and married the daughter of Condorcet and niece of Grouchy. He lived through the last days of the consulate, and all of the first empire, the restoration, the hundred days, the second restoration, the July monarchy and the second republic to die tranquilly at the dawn of the second empire. An obituary notice in The Nation sang his praises.