1. Hobson to Colonel Dan Bryan, 18 February 1947, B[ureau of] M[ilitary] H[istory], W[itness] S[tatement] 652, Irish Military Archives, Dublin.
2. F. X. Martin, ‘1916 – Myth, Fact and Mystery’, Studia Hibernica, 7 (1967), pp. 9, 31.
3. Ibid., p. 107.
4. There is a perceptive evaluation in Diarmuid Ferriter, ‘“In such deadly earnest”: The Bureau of Military History’, Dublin Review, 12 (2003), pp. 36–65.
5. Martin, ‘1916’, p. 68.
1. Charles Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland. Government and Resistance since 1848 (Oxford 1983), pp. 24–38.
2. Emmet Larkin, ‘Church, State and Nation in Modern Ireland’, American Historical Review, 80 (1975).
3. Frank Callanan, T. M. Healy (Cork 1996), p. 311.
4. Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland, pp. 158–66.
5. F. S. L. Lyons, Culture and Anarchy in Ireland 1890–1939 (Oxford 1979), p. 32.
6. Tony Crowley, The Politics of Language in Ireland 1366–1922 (London 2000), pp. 182–8.
7. Donal McCartney, ‘Hyde, Moran and Irish Ireland’, in F. X. Martin (ed.), Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising (London 1967), p. 46. This is not to suggest that Hyde actually read Herder, though he certainly read Grimm. Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde (Dublin 1974), p. 141.
8. D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (3rd edition, London 1995), pp. 238–42.
9. A process illuminated in Marianne Elliott, Robert Emmet: the Making of a Legend (London 2003).
10. Timothy J. O’Keefe, ‘The 1898 Efforts to Celebrate the United Irishmen: the ’98 Centennial’, Eire-Ireland, 23 (1988), p. 72.
11. Arthur Griffith. A Study of the Founder of Sinn Fein (anonymous) (Dublin n.d. [1917]), p. 8. He wrote ‘lucid and vehement prose derived partly from Swift and Mitchel, but mainly from a natural talent which owed nothing to any formal study of syntax or grammar’. Seán Ó Luing, ‘Arthur Griffith and Sinn Féin’, in Martin (ed.), Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising, p. 56.
12. See Patrick Maume, The Long Gestation. Irish Nationalist Life 1891–1918 (Dublin 1999), pp. 28ff. for an illuminating survey.
13. Ernest Blythe, ‘Arthur Griffith’, Administration, 8 (1960), p. 37. Blythe notes that time and again Griffith ‘seemed deliberately to avoid being put at the top’.
14. Variously rendered in English as ‘warriors of Ireland’ or ‘soldiers of destiny’; ‘league’ or ‘band of Gaels’.
15. Shaw Desmond, The Drama of Sinn Féin (London 1923), p. 116.
16. Bulmer Hobson, Defensive Warfare. A Handbook for Nationalists (Belfast 1909).
17. For the international perspective see Richard Davis, Arthur Griffith and Non-violent Sinn Féin (Dublin 1974), pp. 91–8.
18. Margaret Ward, Maud Gonne. Ireland’s Joan of Arc (London 1990), pp. 61–8. But as Ward shows in Unmanageable Revolutionaries. Women and Irish Nationalism (London 1983), esp. ch. 7, the mark proved to be less pervasive than Gonne and her fellow activists hoped.
19. Fainne an Lae, 19 November 1898, quoted in Ruth Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse. The Triumph of Failure (London 1977), p. 29.
20. There is a comprehensive analysis of the Brothers’ educational methods in Barry M. Coldrey, Faith and Fatherland: the Christian Brothers and the Development of Irish Nationalism 1838–1921 (Dublin 1988). See especially ch. 6 on the teaching of Irish history.
21. Sean Farrell Moran, ‘Patrick Pearse and the European Revolt against Reason’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1 (1989), p. 629.
22. Edwards, Patrick Pearse, p. 117.
23. For a critical analysis of Pearse’s political ideas, see John Coakley, ‘Patrick Pearse and the “Noble Lie” of Irish Nationalism’, Studies in Conflict and Violence, 62 (1983), pp. 119–34.
24. For a lucid survey see, e.g., Josep Llobera, The God of Modernity (London 1994), especially part II.
25. Tom Garvin, ‘Priests and Patriots. Irish Separatism and Fear of the Modern, 1890–1914’, Irish Historical Studies, 25 (97) (1986), pp. 67–81.
26. On Sheehan’s Luke Delmege (1901) and other works see Patrick O’Farrell, Ireland’s English Question (New York 1971), p. 230.
27. R. F. Foster, ‘Marginal Men and Micks on the Make’, in Paddy and Mr Punch. Connections in Irish and English History (London 1993), p. 299. Nowadays some cultural critics prefer to speak of ‘deformation’. Cf Seamus Deane, Strange Country. Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790 (Oxford 1997), pp. 49ff.
28. William Irwin Thompson, The Imagination of an Insurrection. Dublin, Easter 1916 (New York 1967), p. 118.
29. Edwards, Patrick Pearse, p. 262.
30. Pearse’s heterodoxy has been pointed out by various writers from J. J. Horgan to Francis Shaw; on Cuchulainn, see Sean Farrell Moran, Patrick Pearse and the Politics of Redemption (Washington, DC, 1994), pp. 158–60.
31. See the argument of J. J. Lee, ‘In Search of Patrick Pearse’, in Mairin Ní Dhonnchadha and Theo Dorgan (eds), Revising the Rising (Derry 1991), pp. 126–7.
32. Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh (as told to Edward Kenny), The Splendid Years (Dublin 1955), p. 140.
33. Ben Levitas, The Theatre of Nation. Irish Drama and Cultural Nationalism 1890–1916 (Oxford 2002), p. 67.
34. R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life, vol. I (Oxford 1997), pp. 261–2.
35. Geraldine Plunkett, ‘Joseph Plunkett: Origin and Background’, University Review 1 (12) (1958), p. 40.
36. Johann A. Norstedt, Thomas MacDonagh. A Critical Biography (Charlottesville, VA, 1980), pp. 52–5, 67–8.
37. Tom Garvin, Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland 1858–1928 (Oxford 1987), pp. 98, 85.
38. F. S. L. Lyons, ‘The Watershed, 1903–7’, in W. E. Vaughan (ed.), Ireland under the Union, II, 1870–1921 (A New History of Ireland, vol. 6) (Oxford 1996), p. 111.
39. L. N. Le Roux, Tom Clarke and the Irish Freedom Movement (Dublin 1936), p. 73.
40. B[ureau of] M[ilitary] H[istory], W[itness] S[tatement] 914 (Denis McCullough), Irish Military Archives, Dublin.
41. F. X. Martin, ‘McCullough, Hobson and Republican Ulster’, in Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising (London 1967), p. 99.
42. Hobson, Defensive Warfare, p. 25.
43. Sean O’Faolain, Constance Markievicz (London 1934), p. 78.
44. BMH WS 357 (Kathleen Lynn).
45. Thompson, Imagination of an Insurrection, p. 77.
46. D. Ryan, Remembering Sion (London 1934), p. 111.
47. Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland, Minutes of Evidence, 1916, Cd. 8311, para. 549.
48. Ibid., para. 969 (Evidence of Sir David Harrel). Harrel added ‘I think it may truthfully be said that the Irish Courts of Petty Sessions are not always exemplary illustrations of the administration of justice.’
49. Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland, Report, 1916, Cd. 8279, para. 5.
50. ‘Report on the Organisation of Intelligence in Ireland, September 1916’, I[mperial] W[ar] M[useum], French MSS 75/46/12, quoted in Eunan O’Halpin, ‘British Intelligence in Ireland’, in Christopher Andrew and David Dilks (eds), The Missing Dimension. Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century (London 1984), pp. 60–1.
51. The Irish People and the Irish Land (1867), quoted in Deane, Strange Country, p. 70.
52. Sylvain Briollay (pseudonym of Roger Chauviré), L’Irlande Insurgée (Paris 1921), pp. 120–1.
53. Senia Paseta, Before the Revolution: Nationalism, Social Change and Ireland’s Catholic Elite, 1879–1922 (Cork 1999).
54. R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600–1972 (London 1988), p. 291.
55. Robert Colls, Identity of England (Oxford 2002), p. 96.
56. Garvin, Nationalist Revolutionaries, pp. 53–6.
1. Alvin Jackson, however, is pessimistic about what he calls this ‘high-risk strategy’; ‘it is just conceivable that a stable, pluralist democracy might have swiftly emerged’, but more likely that it would have been followed by ‘a delayed apocalypse’. ‘British Ireland: What if Home Rule had been enacted in 1912?’ in Niall Ferguson (ed.), Virtual History (London 1997), pp. 226–7.
2. But compare the argument implicit in David Fitzpatrick, ‘Militarism in Ireland 1900–1922’, in T. Bartlett and K. Jeffery (eds), A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge 1996), pp. 379–406.
3. Karl Liebknecht, Militarism and Anti-militarism (1907; English translation, Cambridge 1973), ch. 1.
4. See Charles Townshend, ‘Militarism and Modern Society’, Wilson Quarterly (Winter 1993), pp. 71–82; George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (London 1936).
5. A. T. Q. Stewart, The Ulster Crisis (London 1967) provides the most substantial account of this process.
6. See the recent reassessments by Tim Bowman: ‘The Ulster Volunteer Force and the Formation of the 36th (Ulster) Division’, Irish Historical Studies, 32 (2001), pp. 498–518; and ‘The Ulster Volunteers 1913–14: Force or Farce?’, History Ireland, 10 (2002), pp. 43–7.
7. ‘The Movement in Ulster’, Cabinet Confidential Print, 22 October 1913, WO 141 26.
8. NA, Crime Branch Special 23.
9. It is no accident that when the Attorney General addressed the arms issue it was in a paper entitled ‘Power to Prevent Importation of Arms, &c, into Ulster’, CAB 37/117.
10. Memorandum by Sir John Simon, ‘Illegalities in Ulster’, 29 November 1913, CAB 37/117.
11. Opinion by W. LeFanu, 17 May 1912, WO 141 26.
12. County Inspector, Enniskillen, to Inspector-General, RIC, 17 October 1913, WO 141 26; Opinion by Attorney General, 5 November 1913, NA, Crime Branch Special 23; Irish Command Intelligence Section, Memorandum on the Situation in Ireland, 31 March 1914, WO 141 4.
13. Irish Freedom, nos. 1, 2, 11 (November 1910–September 1911).
14. Aodogan O’Rahilly, Winding the Clock. O’Rahilly and the 1916 Rising (Dublin 1991), p. 84.
15. F. X. Martin’s view (following that of O’Rahilly) that the Force was ‘a hoax’ is contested in Oliver Snoddy, ‘The Midland Volunteer Force 1913’, Journal of the Old Athlone Society (1968), pp. 39–44.
16. BMH WS 296 (Harry Nicholls).
17. Translation by Ruth Dudley Edwards, in her Patrick Pearse. The Triumph of Failure (London 1977), pp. 161–2.
18. P. H. Pearse, ‘The Coming Revolution’, An Claideamh Soluis, 8 November 1913.
19. O’Rahilly specified 50 men; Hobson said he had 500. F. X. Martin (ed.), The Irish Volunteers 1913–1915 (Dublin 1963), p. 24.
20. Manifesto of the Irish Volunteers, Volunteer Gazette, December 1913; reprinted in F. X. Martin (ed.), The Irish Volunteers 1913–1915. Recollections and Documents (Dublin 1963), pp. 98–101.
21. BMH WS 114 (Eamon O’Connor).
22. BMH WS 90 (Con Collins).
23. Irish Volunteers, Military Instructions for Units, 1914, Hobson MSS, NLI Ms 13174.
24. Irish Volunteers, General Instructions for Forming Companies, 1914, loc. cit.
25. For an interesting if flawed attempt to set the Volunteers in international perspective see Jock Haswell, Citizen Armies (London 1973).
26. Memoirs of Desmond FitzGerald, ed. Fergus FitzGerald (London 1968), p. 39.
27. Peter Hart, ‘Youth Culture and the Cork I.R.A.’, in D. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Revolution? Ireland 1917–1923 (Dublin 1990), pp. 15–20.
28. Eoghan Davies, ‘The Guerrilla Mind’, in Fitzpatrick (ed.), Revolution?, pp. 44–6.
29. Cf. the pioneering argument of Morris Janowitz, The Military in the Political Development of New Nations: An Essay in Comparative Analysis (Chicago 1964).
30. Memoirs of Desmond FitzGerald, pp. 37–8.
31. BMH WS 907 (Laurence Nugent).
32. BMH WS 284 (Michael Staines).
33. BMH WS 114 (Eamon O’Connor).
34. Peter Hart, ‘Paramilitary Politics in Ireland’, in The IRA at War 1916–1923 (Oxford 2003), p. 98.
35. P. H. Pearse, ‘The Irish Flag’, in Martin (ed.), The Irish Volunteers, p. 132. Report by Uniform Sub-Committee, 12 August 1914, NLI Ms 13174. See also Pearse’s holograph notes on ‘Uniforms and Equipment’, 13 October 1915, Thomas Johnson MSS, IMA CD258/3.
36. Irish Volunteer, 18 April 1914.
37. Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, ‘An Open Letter to Thomas MacDonagh’, Irish Citizen, May 1915, reprinted in O. Dudley Edwards and F. Pyle (eds), 1916: the Easter Rising (London 1969), pp. 149–52.
38. Margaret Ward, Unmanageable Revolutionaries. Women and Irish Nationalism (London 1983), p. 97.
39. BMH WS 180 (Kathleen [Murphy] O’Kelly).
40. Peter Hart, ‘The Social Structure of the Irish Republican Army’, in The IRA at War 1916–1923, Table 13, p. 124. Farmers and their sons formed 38 per cent of the population, but only 29 per cent of the 497 non-Dublin Volunteers interned in 1916. Unskilled or semi-skilled workers formed 16 per cent of the non-Dublin and 36 per cent of 872 Dublin Volunteers interned; skilled workers 19 and 40 per cent respectively (the figures for shop assistants and clerks were 15 and 18 per cent).
41. Another statistical analysis of the 1916 arrestees, using slightly different occupational categories, confirms the heavy over-representation of ‘general labourers’. Stein Larsen and Oliver Snoddy, ‘1916 – a Workingmen’s Revolution?’ Social Studies, 2 (1973), Table 5, p. 385.
42. Kathleen Keyes McDonnell, There is a Bridge at Bandon. A Personal Account of the Irish War of Independence (Cork 1972), pp. 18, 22.
43. Joseph V. O’Brien, ‘Dear, Dirty Dublin’. A City in Distress 1899–1916 (Berkeley, CA, 1982), ch. 8.
44. R. M. Fox, The History of the Irish Citizen Army (Dublin 1943), p. 46.
45. Sean O’Casey, The Story of the Irish Citizen Army (Dublin 1919), p. 10.
46. Frank Robbins, Under the Starry Plough. Recollections of the Irish Citizen Army (Dublin 1977), p. 34.
47. Jacqueline Van Voris, Constance de Markievicz in the Cause of Ireland (Amherst, MA, 1967), pp. 140–1.
48. For the effect of the US tour, see Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse, pp. 184–97; and Sean Farrell Moran, Patrick Pearse and the Politics of Redemption (Washington, DC, 1994), pp. 141–4.
49. ‘Robert Emmet and the Ireland of Today’, Emmet Commemoration in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY, 2 March 1914, Bodenstown Series, no. 1, quoted in W. A. Phillips, The Revolution in Ireland 1906–1923 (London 1923), p. 81.
50. Charles Townshend, ‘Military Force and Civil Authority in the United Kingdom, 1914–1921’, Journal of British Studies, 28 (3) (1989), pp. 269–70. For a long view of the incident’s significance, see Hew Strachan, The Politics of the British Army (Oxford 1997), pp. 112–17.
51. There is a level-headed account in Elizabeth A. Muenger, The British Military Dilemma in Ireland. Occupation Politics 1886–1914 (Lawrence, Kansas, 1991), ch. 7.
52. Bulmer Hobson, A Short History of the Irish Volunteers (Dublin 1918), p. 93.
53. Ibid., p. 105.
54. MacNeill to Gwynn, 20 May 1914, Redmond MSS, NLI Ms 15204. There is an extended account of the Redmond–MacNeill manoeuvring in Michael Tierney, Eoin MacNeill: Scholar and Man of Action, 1867–1945 (Oxford 1980), pp. 124–55.
55. The O’Rahilly, The Secret History of the Irish Volunteers (Dublin, 1915), p. 7.
56. Hobson to McGarrity, 18 May 1914, in Sean Cronin (ed.), The McGarrity Papers (Tralee 1972), p. 42.
57. O’Rahilly to Béaslaí, n.d. [June] 1914. Béaslaí MMS, NLI Ms 33917.
58. Andrew Boyle, The Riddle of Erskine Childers (London 1977), p. 191.
59. Bulmer Hobson, ‘Foundation and Growth of the Irish Volunteers, 1913–14’, in Martin (ed.), The Irish Volunteers, p. 33.
60. Sir John Ross of Bladensburg to Under-Secretary, 27 July 1914. BL Add. MS 49821, ff. 71–86.
61. Hobson, Short History of the Irish Volunteers, pp. 155–6.
62. Hobson, ‘Foundation and Growth of the Irish Volunteers’, p. 39.
63. Cesca Chenevix Trench’s journal, 31 July 1914. Private possession, courtesy of Anthony Fletcher.
64. Plunkett papers, NLI Ms 11397; BMH WS 360 (Seamus Daly). As against the view of some that the Howth Mauser’s heavy recoil made it difficult to use, others stressed the value of its accuracy, which made it ‘a really excellent weapon’ for sniping. M. Staines and M. O’Reilly, ‘The Defence of the GPO’, An tOglác, 23 January 1926.
65. Report of the Royal Commission on the Landing of Arms at Howth on 26th July 1914, 4 September 1914. Cd. 7631. The commissioners were Lord Shaw of the Court of Appeal, and two members of the Irish King’s Bench.
66. Ibid.
67. Memorandum on the situation in Ireland on the 31st March, 1914, prepared in the intelligence section of the General Staff at Headquarters, Irish Command, WO 141 4, pp. 1, 4, 3, 6, 8.
68. Ibid., pp. 11, 9.
69. Cd. 8279, p. 7.
70. CIGS to Sec. of State for War, ‘Mobilization arrangements in the event of disturbances in Ireland’, 4 July 1914, WO 32 9569.
1. Inspector-General RIC, Monthly Report, August 1914, CO 904 94.
2. As, equally, in France. See Stephane Audouin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14–18, retrouver la Guerre (Paris 2000), ch. 5.
3. James O. Hannay, ‘Ireland and the War’, The Nineteenth Century and After, 77 (August 1915), p. 394.
4. Cameron Hazlehurst, Politicians at War, July 1914 to May 1915 (London 1971), ch. 1.
5. Moore to Redmond, 31 July 1914, Redmond papers, NLI Ms 15206.
6. This is argued by, e.g., J. J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985 (Cambridge 1989), p. 21. There is a persuasive re-evaluation of his strategy in Paul Bew, John Redmond (Dundalk 1996).
7. Charles Hobhouse, Inside Asquith’s Cabinet (London 1977), p. 181.
8. George H. Cassar, Kitchener. Architect of Victory (London 1977), pp. 218–19.
9. Denis Gwynn, The Life of John Redmond (London 1932), pp. 416–17.
10. Redmond to Asquith, 8 August 1914, NLI Ms 15165.
11. Taking the figure for the first six-month period as 100, those for the next two were 50 and 40 in Ireland, 50 and 39 in Britain. P. Callan, ‘Recruiting for the British Army in Ireland during the First World War’, The Irish Sword, 17 (1987), pp. 42–56.
12. David Fitzpatrick, ‘The Logic of Collective Sacrifice: Ireland and the British Army, 1914–1918’, Historical Journal, 38 (4) (1995). Cf. the slightly different – but generally congruent – statistics in Keith Jeffery, Ireland and the Great War (Cambridge 2000), p. 7.
13. Bulmer Hobson, ‘Foundation and Growth of the Irish Volunteers’, in F. X. Martin (ed.), The Irish Volunteers 1913–1915 (Dublin 1963), p. 51.
14. Pearse to McGarrity, 8 August 1914, NLI Ms 17477.
15. Ibid.
16. BMH WS 725 (Desmond Ryan).
17. MacNeill to Casement, 15 August 1914, Michael Tierney, Eoin MacNeill (Oxford 1980), pp. 146–7.
18. MacNeill memoir in ibid., p. 147
19. Newspaper quotation from Sligo Champion; Michael Farry, Sligo 1914–1921. A Chronicle of Conflict (Trim, Co. Meath, 1992), pp. 44, 45.
20. Liam Tannam, quoted in Joost Augusteijn, From Public Defiance to Guerrilla Warfare (Dublin 1996), pp. 51–2.
21. Earl of Longford and T. P. O’Neill, Eamon de Valera (London 1970), p. 472. See also Owen Dudley Edwards, Eamon de Valera (Cardiff 1987), pp. 26–7.
22. BMH WS 606 (James Flood).
23. BMH WS 400 (Richard Walsh).
24. J. J. O’Connell, who started work as an organizer in January 1915 (and joined the General Staff later that year), made several tours of inspection and found very few organized units. Holograph memoir, NLI Ms 22114.
25. Inspector-General RIC, Monthly Report, September 1914, CO 904 94.
26. Moore to Redmond, 24 September 1915, NLI Ms 15206.
27. Tom Dooley, ‘Southern Ireland, Historians and the First World War’, Irish Studies Review, 4 (1993), p. 8.
28. J. J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985 (Cambridge 1989), p. 23.
29. Thomas P. Dooley, ‘Politics, Bands and Marketing: Army Recruitment in Waterford City, 1914–15’, The Irish Sword, 18(72) (1991), p. 211.
30. Stephen Gwynn, Notes on Recruitment, n.d. [1916], NLI Ms 15262.
31. Brade to Redmond, 21 February 1915, and reply, 24 February, NLI Ms 15261. The argument was repeated in July, in correspondence with General Sclater.
32. IG RIC Reports, CO904 94–5.
33. Hannay, ‘Ireland and the War’, pp. 397, 400.
34. Jeffery, Ireland and the Great War, p. 41.
35. Terence Denman, ‘The 10th (Irish) Division 1914–15: a Study in Military and Political Interaction’, The Irish Sword 17 (1987), p. 21.
36. Quoted in Jeffery, Ireland and the Great War, p. 44.
37. Tim Bowman, ‘The Irish Recruiting and Anti-recruiting Campaigns, 1914–1918’, in B. Taithe and T. Thornton (eds), Propaganda. Political Rhetoric and Identity 1300–2000 (London 1999), pp. 223–38; Pauline Codd, ‘Recruiting and Responses to War in Wexford’, in D. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Ireland and the First World War (Dublin 1988), p. 20; Fitzpatrick, ‘The Logic of Collective Sacrifice’, p. 1030.
38. Æ recommended Patrick McGill, Francis Ledwidge, Stephen Gwynn and Canon Hannay. Nathan to Magill, 15 February, and Kelly to Nathan, 25 February 1916. File on preparation of Report on Recruiting in Ireland for F. M. Earl Kitchener (Cd. 8168, 13 January 1916). Joseph Brennan papers, NLI Ms 26191.
39. David W. Miller, Church, State and Nation in Ireland 1898–1921 (Dublin 1973), p. 313.
40. ‘List of Clergymen who have come under notice owing to their disloyal language or conduct during the year 1915’, Judicial Division, Chief Secretary’s Office, Intelligence Notes, 1915.
41. Miller, Church, State and Nation, p. 313.
42. Jerome aan de Wiel, The Catholic Church in Ireland 1914–1918 (Dublin 2003), pp. 69–72.
43. Miller, Church, State and Nation, p. 317.
44. NLI Ms 22114.
45. Sinn Féin, 20 December 1913.
46. For a comprehensive account see Virginia E. Glandon, Arthur Griffith and the Advanced-Nationalist Press in Ireland, 1900–1922 (New York 1985), ch. 6.
47. The leading Volunteer organizer in Wexford, Brennan-Whitmore, ‘entirely agreed with me, and said he would use his personal authority as far as possible to limit and confine the damage likely to be done by spreading such ideas. He shared with me – and with many others, as will appear later – a fear that the Irish Volunteers might become a revolutionary, and not a military body.’ NLI Ms 13168.
48. Augusteijn, From Public Defiance to Guerrilla Warfare, pp. 48–9.
49. Seán Moylan in his own words, Aubane Historical Society (2003), p. 16.
50. ‘How to Help the Volunteer Movement’, IV Circular (produced by Lord Midleton for the Royal Commission, 1916), Cd. 8311, p. 115.
51. C. D. Greaves, Liam Mellows and the Irish Revolution (London 1971), pp. 72–7. See also the accounts of Thomas Hynes (BMH WS 714) and Thomas ‘Sweeny’ Newell (BMH WS 572).
52. O’Connell memoir, NLI Ms 22114.
53. David Fitzpatrick, Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution (Cork 2003), p. 36.
54. BMH WS 400 (Richard Walsh).
55. BMH WS 72 (John Cahalane).
56. Diary, 17, 19 October, 28 November. O’Donoghue MSS, NLI Ms 31139.
57. RIC Reports, CO 904 98.
58. Chief Secretary’s Office, Note on Irish Volunteers, 8 January 1915, NA, D/T S. 14049.
59. Ben Novick, ‘Postal Censorship in Ireland, 1914–1916’, Irish Historical Studies, 31 (123) (1999), p. 344.
60. Ibid., p. 346.
61. Birrell to Nathan, in Leon Ó Broin, Dublin Castle and the 1916 Rising (London 1966), pp. 40–41.
62. As he advised the Galway RIC County Inspector, ‘the only thing to do is to act from day to day keeping the country as quiet as possible during the war’. Bod[leian Library, Oxford], MS Nathan 469.
63. Ó Broin, Dublin Castle and the 1916 Rising, pp. 53–5.
64. O’Hegarty had been delighted by the freedom he had been given at work in London. ‘I found that my colleagues and superiors expected an Irishman to be unusual and not to be bound by rules and regulations.’ Stereotyping could have its benefits. BMH WS 840 (Patrick Sarsfield O’Hegarty).
65. A. H. Norway, ‘Irish Experiences in War’, in K. Jeffery (ed.), The Sinn Féin Rebellion as They Saw It (Dublin 1999).
66. Colm Campbell, Emergency Law in Ireland 1918–1925 (Oxford 1994), pp. 9–10.
67. Royal Commission Report, Cd. 8311, para. 1343.
1. Pearse to McGarrity, 17 July 1914, McGarrity MSS, NLI Ms 17472.
2. BMH WS 695 (Thomas McCrave).
3. Pearse to McGarrity, 12 August 1914, NLI Ms 17472.
4. Though Clarke’s widow Kathleen always hotly disputed that this had happened. See ch. 6 below.
5. Pearse to McGarrity, 19 October 1914, NLI Ms 17472.
6. For a strong critique of the role of hatred in Pearse’s nationalism, see Francis Shaw, ‘The Canon of Irish History – A Challenge’, Studies (Summer 1972), esp. p. 125.
7. General Council resolution, 6 December 1914, Irish Volunteer, 19 December 1914.
8. R. Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse. The Triumph of Failure (London 1977), p. 239, notes that ‘his utility to the IRB was based wholly on his public reputation, for he had little to offer as a counsellor or organiser. Bankruptcy would finish him.’
9. The original holograph of Pearse’s scheme of organization is, remarkably, preserved (in both English and Irish language versions) in the papers of Thomas Johnson, IMA CD 258/3. O’Connell, inevitably, thought the scheme over-elaborate if not dysfunctional, Ms memoir, NLI Ms 22114.
10. Maureen Wall, ‘The Background to the Rising’, in K. B. Nowlan (ed.), The Making of 1916 (Dublin 1969), p. 166.
11. Louis Le Roux, Tom Clarke and the Irish Freedom Movement (Dublin 1936); BMH WS 26 (Patrick Sarsfield O’Hegarty); Diarmuid Lynch, The IRB and the 1916 Insurrection (Cork 1957), p. 25.
12. Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland, Minutes of Evidence, Cd. 8311, p. 83 (County Inspector J. R. Sharpe).
13. BMH WS 909 (Sidney Gifford Czira). She was also a regular contributor to Bean na hÉireann under the name Sorcha Ni Annlain.
14. This was perceptively suggested by Maureen Wall. There is no evidence, however, that the planners were anxious in advance about the discipline of the Dublin Brigade – if anything the reverse. Even the ever-fretting Ginger O’Connell was fairly confident on this score.
15. NLI Ms 13168. In fact, Pearse’s orders to Eamonn Ceannt (4th Battalion) only ran to two handwritten notebook sheets; but MacDonagh’s did cover five foolscap pages. Both highly atmospheric documents have been preserved in BMH CD 94/1/4–5.
16. ‘The fact is both Pearse and MacDonagh, and Plunkett also, believed that the art of war could be studied in books without any trouble being taken to fit the book theories to material facts.’ O’Connell, holograph memoir, NLI Ms 22114.
17. F. X. Martin, ‘The 1916 Rising – A Coup d’état or a “Bloody Protest”?’ Studia Hibernica, 8 (1968), p. 112.
18. Fergus FitzGerald (ed.), Memoirs of Desmond FitzGerald (London 1968), p. 79.
19. Ibid.; BMH WS 184 (Alfred Cotton).
20. P. H. Pearse, ‘Robert Emmet and the Ireland of Today’ (talk given at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, 2 March 1914), in Collected Works of Padraic H. Pearse (Dublin 1922), p. 69.
21. Irish Volunteer, 20 November 1915. O’Connell’s series included ‘The Nature and Varieties of Cover’, and ‘Ambushes’.
22. O’Connell noted the ‘very marked animus’ against the precocious O’Duffy among the Volunteer general staff, on the grounds of his ‘OTC manner’. O’Connell’s attempt to get O’Duffy appointed as trainer for the Volunteer NCOs was only reluctantly and belatedly acceded to. Memoir, NLI Ms 22114.
23. ‘When [the others] found that this was not so they were terribly surprised.’ Geraldine Plunkett to Richard Hayes, 15 October 1947, BMH WS 29. She continued to hold that General Friend ‘would not have bombarded Dublin’, and attributed the use of artillery to Maxwell – in defiance of chronology, since artillery was first deployed three days before Maxwell took command.
24. BMH WS 261 (Piaras Béaslaí).
25. Colonel P. J. Hally, ‘The Easter 1916 Rising in Dublin: the Military Aspects. Part I’, Irish Sword, 7 (29) (1966), p. 326.
26. BMH WS 284 (Michael Staines). Sean Heuston’s brother was one of those who became convinced that the GPO was never intended to serve as HQ. See, e.g., BMH CD 309/1 (Rev. J. M. Heuston).
27. The judgement of Lt. A. A. Luce, an RIR officer on sick leave who became part of the Trinity garrison on 24 April. TCD Ms 4874/2/1.
28. MacDonagh told Tom Slater (BMH WS 263) that ‘the Bank of Ireland was not to be entered on account of its historical associations’.
29. Hally, ‘Easter 1916 Rising … Part I’, p. 319, judges the Liffey ‘a good obstacle, and its bridges could become major defensive points’.
30. Florence O’Donoghue, ‘Plans for the 1916 Rising’, University Review, 3 (March 1963), p. 3.
31. Joseph O’Rourke of the 2nd Battalion is unusual in suggesting (BMH WS 1244) that the original plan was to move the Dublin Volunteers westwards by train, and that this was only changed in Holy Week, when ‘something went wrong’, and ‘we were told we would have to take public buildings in Dublin and proceed with street fighting. But even to the last we clung to the idea that the first plan was going through.’
32. Roger Casement to Maurice Moore, 11 December 1913, Moore MSS, NLI Ms 10561.
33. Franz von Papen to Foreign Office, 9 August 1914. Reinhard Doerries, Prelude to the Easter Rising. Sir Roger Casement in Imperial Germany (London 2000), p. 46. This meticulously edited collection of documents from the German archives provides a revelatory view of German official thinking.
34. Gottlieb von Jagow to Arthur Zimmerman, 7 November 1914, in Doerries, Prelude to the Easter Rising, p. 58.
35. Notes by Casement, 6 February 1916, New York Public Library, Maloney Collection of Irish Historical Papers, Box 2.
36. Michael Foy and Brian Barton, The Easter Rising (Stroud 1999), p. 18.
37. Ibid.
38. BMH WS 6 (Liam O Briain)
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid. It is a pity that the BMH does not seem to have followed up his suggestion that ‘it would be interesting to obtain statements from surviving old D[ublin] B[rigade] officers as to the areas in the county they were to occupy in case of active service.’
42. MacDonagh ‘said the fight would start in the cities, that after about a week we would be driven out of the city and we would take to the country, where we would put up a great fight for some time, but that eventually we would have to capitulate’, M. Hopkinson (ed.), Frank Henderson’s Easter Rising (Cork 1998), p. 33.
43. F. X. Martin, ‘1916 – Coup d’état or “Bloody Protest”?’ p. 110.
44. O’Casey was bitterly opposed to uniforms, which workers could not afford to buy; his final clash with Markievicz was partly over this issue.
45. C. Desmond Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly (London 1972), p. 352.
46. Ruth Dudley Edwards, James Connolly (Dublin 1981), p. 127.
47. ‘Street Fighting’, Workers’ Republic, 24 July 1915; see also 5, 12, 19 June; 3, 10, 17 July 1915. Austen Morgan, James Connolly (Manchester 1988), p. 164.
48. BMH WS 382 (Thomas Mallin).
49. BMH WS 258 (Maeve Cavanagh).
50. Sean Farrell Moran, ‘Patrick Pearse and the European Revolt against Reason’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1 (1989), pp. 639–40.
51. Patrick O’Farrell, Ireland’s English Question (New York 1971), pp. 231–2.
52. Maureen Murphy, ‘“What Stood in the Post Office / With Pearse and Connolly?”: the Case for Robert Emmet,’ Eire-Ireland, 14 (3) (1979), p. 142.
53. Moran, ‘Patrick Pearse and the European Revolt’, p. 639.
54. T. J. MacSwiney, ‘Before the Last Battle’, UCD P48b/327.
55. R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats. A Life, vol. 2 (Oxford 2003), p. 46.
56. BMH WS 497 (Eamonn Bulfin).
57. BMH WS 400 (Richard Walsh).
58. Nadolny to Foreign Office, 1 March 1916, in Doerries, Prelude to the Easter Rising, p. 17.
59. E. MacNeill, Memorandum No. 2, in F. X. Martin, ‘Eoin MacNeill on the 1916 Rising’, Irish Historical Studies, 12 (47) (1961), p. 247.
60. Lynch, The IRB and the 1916 Insurrection, pp. 29–30; John Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel (New York 1929), p. 462.
61. BMH WS 26 (Patrick Sarsfield O’Hegarty).
62. Lynch papers, NLI Ms 5173.
63. Piaras Béaslaí, Michael Collins and the Making of a New Ireland (Dublin 1926), vol. 1, pp. 46–7.
64. BMH WS 1766 (William O’Brien).
65. BMH WS 725 (Desmond Ryan).
66. E. MacNeill, Memorandum No. 1, February 1916, in F. X. Martin, ‘Eoin MacNeill’, pp. 236–9.
1. John Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel (New York 1929), p. 458. Even more oddly, the courier, Tommy O’Connor, was carrying the cipher key with him.
2. Florence O’Donoghue, ‘The Failure of the German Arms Landing at Easter 1916’, Cork Historical and Archaeological Society Journal, 71 (1966), p. 60.
3. Jerome aan de Wiel, The Catholic Church in Ireland, 1914–1918 (Dublin 2003), p. 84.
4. Michael Tierney, Eoin MacNeill (Oxford 1980), p. 202, calls this a ‘fantastic intimation’.
5. M. Hopkinson (ed.), Frank Henderson’s Easter Rising (Cork 1998), pp. 32–3. It is not clear whether MacDonagh was addressing only the 2nd Battalion.
6. BMH WS 34 (Patrick O’Sullivan).
7. Tierney, MacNeill, pp. 181–2.
8. BMH WS 1035 (Seán Cody).
9. C. S. Andrews, Dublin Made Me (Dublin 1979), p. 85.
10. B. L. Reid, The Lives of Roger Casement (New Haven, Conn., 1976), p. 348.
11. Cd. 8279, q. 1939, p. 85.
12. BMH WS 29 (Geraldine Dillon).
13. Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/D/18, quoted in Maryann Valiulis, Portrait of a Revolutionary. General Richard Mulcahy and the Founding of the Irish Free State (Dublin 1992), p. 12.
14. BMH WS 398 (Brigid Martin).
15. Wednesday report in Cd. 8279, p. 8; Thursday in BMH WS 360 (Seamus Daly).
16. Documents Relative to the Sinn Fein Movement, Cmd. 1108 (1921).
17. John de Courcy Ireland, The Sea and the Easter Rising (Dublin 1966), p. 18.
18. Eunan O’Halpin, ‘British Intelligence in Ireland’, in C. Andrew and D. Dilks (eds), The Missing Dimension (London 1984), p. 60, notes that Hall refused Casement’s request to publish his appeal to abandon the rebellion.
19. The denouncer was Joseph Zerhusen, a Hamburg merchant and reserve officer in the 5th Garde Grenadier Regiment, a sympathizer (he had lived in Liverpool ‘and had the luck to get to know several influential Irishmen there and finally married an Irish lady of true Irish parentage’) who had been anxious to transfer into the Irish Brigade. He was supported by an NCO of the Brigade who wrote ‘I only wish the “boys” themselves were half as keen.’ Reinhard Doerries, Prelude to the Easter Rising (London 2000), pp. 125–6.
20. Casement to Wedel, 2 April 1916. (TS copy) WO 141 19.
21. Interestingly, Monteith, the only man involved in the arms negotiations on the Irish side who had some military expertise, had indicated to Joe McGarrity that bringing arms in surreptitiously was not only possible, but preferable. McGarrity’s diary, 20 August 1915, NLI Ms 17551.
22. The most careful attempt to clarify it is O’Donoghue, ‘Failure of the German Arms Landing’, pp. 49–61.
23. Narrative in An Phoblacht, 13 September 1930.
24. Ireland, The Sea and the 1916 Rising, pp. 15–17. Spindler’s own story lost nothing in the telling in his well-known book The Mystery of the Casement Ship (Berlin 1931, an enlarged translation of his original Das Geheimvolle Schiff of 1921). He even painted a set of pictures showing his idiosyncratic version of the topography of the Kerry and Cork coast.
25. J. Anthony Gaughan, Austin Stack. Portrait of a Separatist (Dublin 1977), pp. 45, 48.
26. O’Donoghue, ‘Failure of the German Arms Landing’, p. 58. Possibly his allusion to ‘local conditions’ in this context indicates that the local people were not co-operative – a more dangerous problem.
27. BMH WS 117 (Maurice Moriarty).
28. Gaughan’s detailed narrative (Austin Stack, pp. 61–2), based on Paddy Cahill’s account, suggests ‘the only plausible reason’ as being that ‘he wished to ensure that the British forces would not be placed on the alert’. But Gaughan admits that ‘few people would find this convincing’. Desmond Ryan (on the basis of Stack’s own account in the Kerry Champion, August–September 1929) thought that ‘his successful bluffing of the police earlier in the day had thrown him off his guard’. The Rising (Dublin 1949), p. 240.
29. See Lucy McDiarmid, ‘Secular Relics: Casement’s Boat, Casement’s Dish’, Textual Practice, 16 (2) (2002), pp. 277–302.
30. Desmond Ryan, The Rising, pp. 112–14, argues that the Ballykissane tragedy ‘destroyed the insurgent plans to establish wireless communications’, though the Libau had no radio, and it is not likely that they would have been able to make contact with U19. He may be on stronger ground in suggesting that its psychological impact was to ‘paralyse Kerry’.
31. There are several detailed accounts of the incident among the BMH Witness Statements, such as that of the owner of the fatal automobile (a Briscoe), John J. Quilty (WS 516).
32. P. J. Little, ‘A 1916 Document’, Capuchin Annual (1942), pp. 454–62. Little renewed his argument against Ryan’s interpretation in the Sunday Press, 7 May 1961, and again in the Dublin Evening Press, 28 July 1961.
33. Circular order by E. MacNeill, 19 April 1916, Terence MacSwiney MSS, UCD P48b/364. Very few copies of this order appear to have survived. MacNeill’s own papers do not seem to contain one, but Terence MacSwiney kept his.
34. Ryan, The Rising, p. 68. Ryan enlarged on his critique in reply to Little in the Sunday Press, 21 May 1961.
35. F. X. Martin, after a very careful analysis, also called the document a forgery, ‘concocted’ by Plunkett and MacDermott; ‘1916 – Myth, Fact and Mystery’, Studia Hibernica, 7 (1967), pp. 119–21.
36. ‘Although it was his last night on earth and he spoke with great conviction, I found great difficulty in believing it’, BMH WS 729 (Mgr Patrick Browne).
37. Smith maintained, however, that the document contained no reference to maps or lists; and, more puzzlingly, that it was not in code. BMH WS 334 (Eugene Smith).
38. BMH WS 257 (Grace Plunkett).
39. F. X. Martin, ‘Eoin MacNeill on the 1916 Rising’, Irish Historical Studies, 12 (47) (1961), p. 260.
40. Diarmuid Lynch, The IRB and the 1916 Insurrection (Cork 1957), p. 50.
41. According to Lynch, his words were less collusive: ‘In view of that, the fight is inevitable and we are all in it’, ibid., p. 51.
42. Martin, ‘Eoin MacNeill on the 1916 Rising’, p. 249.
43. Dr Jim Ryan delivered this order to Terence MacSwiney in Cork at 6 a.m. on 22 April: ‘Comdts. McCurtain and McSwiney are to proceed with the rising and Comdt. O’Connell is to go forthwith to Waterford as per previous instructions.’
44. Ryan ‘took that to mean the stuff they had on hands. He certainly said nothing about holding out until arms and ammunition would come from Germany’, BMH WS 70.
45. Other accounts (e.g. Hobson himself in the Irish Times, 6 May 1961) suggest that he was summoned to a meeting of the Leinster Executive in Phibsboro, and arrested there.
46. BMH WS 798 (Martin Conlon).
47. Leon Ó Broin, Revolutionary Underground (Dublin 1976), p. 173.
48. Martin, ‘1916 – Myth, Fact and Mystery’, pp. 88–9.
49. BMH WS 409 (Valentine Jackson).
50. BMH WS 705 (Christopher Brady). Brady, the Workers’ Republic printer, supervised the production of 2,500 copies of the proclamation.
51. Kathleen Clarke (ed. Helen Litton), Revolutionary Woman, p. 76.
52. L. N. Le Roux, Tom Clarke and the Irish Freedom Movement (Dublin 1936), p. 208.
53. The first ‘insider’ account to do this was Francis P. Jones, History of the Sinn Fein Movement and the Irish Rebellion of 1916 (New York 1917).
54. BMH WS 360 (Seamus Daly).
55. BMH WS 1687 (Harry Colley).
56. Hopkinson (ed.), Frank Henderson’s Easter Rising, pp. 39–41.
57. BMH WS 242 (Liam Tannam).
58. BMH WS 43 (Tim Buckley, James Murphy) has the Clondrohid Company at Carriganimma. The Macroom Company (5th Battalion) was there (BMH WS 93, Dan Corkery). The Castletownroche Company was at Beeing, as was the Lyre Company, though John Cahalane claimed that ‘no men from other [i.e. neighbouring] districts turned out on Sunday’, BMH WS 72.
59. ‘We had no definite information as to what the purpose of the parade was, but for some weeks before that there had been a tenseness which made us anticipate that we may be in a fight at short notice’, BMH WS 34 (Patrick O’Sullivan).
60. BMH WS 138 (Jerome Crowley, Maurice Healy, Timothy O’Riordan).
61. BMH WS 22 (Charles Cullinane); BMH WS 63 (Sean Butler, David O’Callaghan, Michael O’Sullivan).
62. Kathleen Keyes McDonnell, There is a Bridge at Bandon (Cork 1972), p. 51.
63. BMH WS 705 (Christopher Brady).
64. Maureen Wall, ‘The plans and the countermand’, in K. B. Nowlan (ed.) The Making of 1916 (Dublin 1969), p. 218.
65. Ibid., pp. 233–4.
66. In particular, the fact that Wall does not consider the abortive Sunday mobilization seriously skews the balance of her assessment.
67. DMP Detective Dept. report, 23 April 1916, PRO CO 904 23.
68. Cf. the (improbably precise) police count of 1,886 rifles and 2,570 shotguns in the provinces, in addition to 800 rifles in Dublin. Chief Secretary’s Office, Dublin Castle, ‘The Sinn Fein or Irish Volunteers and the Rebellion’, in B. MacGiolla Choille (ed.), Intelligence Notes 1913–16 Preserved in the State Paper Office (Baile Atha Cliath 1966), pp. 221–38.
69. Cd. 8311, para. 1346.
70. Birrell to Midleton, 25 February 1916. Leon Ó Broin, Dublin Castle and the 1916 Rising (London 1966), p. 65.
71. To N. Bailey, 12 March 1916, Bod, MSS Nathan 466.
72. Nathan to O’Donnell, 16 February 1916, Bod, MSS Nathan 469.
73. Tivy to Nathan, 27 March 1916, Bod, MSS Nathan 478.
74. Cd. 8311, para. 770.
75. Wimborne to Nathan, 15 March 1916, Bod, MSS Nathan 478.
76. Lady Cynthia Asquith, Diaries 1915–18 (London 1968), pp. 125–31.
77. Cd. 8311, para. 14.
78. DMP Detective Dept. report, 31 March 1916, PRO CO 904 23.
79. Cd. 8311, para. 738.
80. Bod, MSS Nathan 481.
81. Cd. 8311, para. 807.
1. BMH WS 293 (Aine Heron).
2. BMH WS 208 (Seumas Kavanagh).
3. BMH WS 242 (Liam Tannam).
4. M. Hopkinson (ed.), Frank Henderson’s Easter Rising (Cork 1998), pp. 41–51.
5. Diarmuid Lynch, The IRB and the 1916 Insurrection (Cork 1960), p. 160.
6. There is a good account of the fighting in Leinster Avenue in BMH WS 288 (Charles Saurin).
7. Hopkinson (ed.), Frank Henderson’s Easter Rising, p. 48.
8. His nephew, Dick Humphreys, left an affectionate picture of the car and its owner in NLI Ms 18829.
9. Diarmuid Lynch MSS, NLI Ms 11125.
10. Michael MacDonagh, quoted in Marianne Elliott, Robert Emmet: the Making of a Legend (London 2003), pp. 182–3.
11. Belfast Evening Telegraph, 5 May 1916.
12. Mrs Macken’s account to Eamon de Valera, de Valera papers, UCDA P150/467. Robert Walpole, however, who claimed to have been given the flag by Connolly to hang from the GPO roof, believed that it was made in Fry’s Poplin Factory, Cork Street, and painted (at Markievicz’s house) by Theo FitzGerald. BMH WS 218 (R. H. Walpole and Theo FitzGerald).
13. Only 1,000 copies were printed, not the 2,500 Connolly had wanted. Shortage of type meant that the text of the proclamation had to be run off in two halves (which did not quite fit together) on Connolly’s stock of cheap poster-sized paper. Several letters in the headings had to be adapted with sealing wax, as is knowledgeably explained by John O’Connor, The Story of the 1916 Proclamation (Dublin n.d. [1986]).
14. F. X. Martin, ‘The Evolution of a Myth – the Easter Rising, Dublin 1916’, in Eugene Kamenka (ed.), Nationalism: the Nature and Evolution of an Idea (London 1973), p. 59.
15. Irish War News, 25 April 1916.
16. Seán T. O’Kelly, ‘1916 before and after’, NLI Ms 27692.
17. See Chapter 7 below.
18. BMH WS 273 (Margaret Keogh).
19. James Stephens, The Insurrection in Dublin (Dublin 1916), pp. 18–20.
20. G. A. Hayes-McCoy, ‘A Military History of the 1916 Rising’, in K. B. Nowlan (ed.), The Making of 1916 (Dublin 1969), pp. 264–6, is the most careful evaluation of the failure to take the Castle.
21. BMH WS 357 (Kathleen Lynn).
22. ‘Inside Trinity College’, by One of the Garrison, Blackwood’s Magazine, July 1916, reprinted in Roger McHugh (ed.), Dublin, 1916 (London 1966), pp. 158–74.
23. Autograph narrative of W. G. Smith, NLI Ms 24952.
24. ‘The Personal Experience of Miss L. Stokes, 11 Raglan Road, Dublin, during the Sinn Fein Rebellion of 1916’, Nonplus, 4 (Winter 1960), p. 12.
25. Stephens, Insurrection in Dublin, p. 26.
26. Ibid., p. 27.
27. Elizabeth Bowen, The Shelbourne. A Centre in Dublin Life for More than a Century (London 1951), pp. 155–6.
28. BMH WS 357 (Kathleen Lynn).
29. Presumably the big automatic pistol that became her trademark. J. Van Voris, Constance de Markievicz in the Cause of Ireland (Amherst, MA, 1967), p. 189.
30. Frank Robbins, Under the Starry Plough (Dublin 1977), pp. 94–6.
31. Liam O Briain, ‘Saint Stephen’s Green Area’, Capuchin Annual (1966), pp. 224–7. This superb narrative – careful, thoughtful and humane – politely disputes Caulfield’s story that the Leeson Street Bridge garrisons retreated from the roof to the warmth of the house overnight.
32. He added that the withdrawal of the ICA men from the pub at the corner of Cuffe Street also ‘seemed strange’; ‘their scouting, if any, seemed defective’. BMH WS 907 (Laurence Nugent).
33. Jerry Golden (BMH WS 521); Lynch counted 282 in Daly’s main force, but only 6 men in the Cabra outpost.
34. BMH WS 261 (Piaras Béaslaí).
35. BMH WS 162 (Jack Shouldice).
36. BMH WS 521 (Jerry Golden).
37. BMH WS 290 (Seán McLoughlin); Balfe’s testimony is quoted in the careful examination of the ‘Movements of 2nd Battalion’ by John Heuston in Headquarters Battalion, Army of the Irish Republic, Easter Week, 1916 (Tallaght 1966), p. 37. Heuston, however, dismissed Balfe’s statement that they reached the Mendicity by the South Quays tram, presumably unaware that it was confirmed by McLoughlin.
38. E.g. by Béaslaí himself, in ‘Edward Daly’s Command’, Limerick’s Fighting Story 1916–21 (Tralee n.d. [1948]), p. 24.
39. BMH WS 1756 (Seumas Murphy)
40. BMH WS 280 (Robert Holland).
41. BMH WS 327 (Patrick Egan).
42. BMH WS 252 (Laurence O’Brien).
43. John F. Boyle, The Irish Rebellion of 1916 (London 1916), p. 79.
44. BMH WS 157 (Joseph O’Connor).
45. Simon Donnelly, ‘Thou Shalt Not Pass’, de Valera papers, UCDA P150/504.
46. BMH WS 1687 (Harry Colley); also NLI Ms 10915.
47. Diarmuid Lynch, ‘Operations, Easter Week’, in Lynch, The IRB and the 1916 Insurrection, pp. 165–6, puts the time of this movement at 6–8 p.m.
48. Speculating that it may have been the absence of a military barracks on that side of the city that encouraged the removal of the 2nd Battalion, Hayes-McCoy pointed out, ‘That may indeed be so, but the pressure which eventually reduced the GPO and crushed the rising was largely exerted from that quarter’, Hayes-McCoy, ‘A Military History’, p. 261.
49. Max Caulfield’s combination of solid research with imaginative verve is well displayed in his account of this incident; The Easter Rebellion (London 1963), pp. 63–5.
50. ‘At Portobello Bridge’, Weekly Irish Times, Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook (Dublin 1917), p. 25.
51. BMH WS 445 (James Slattery).
52. BMH WS 263 (Thomas Slater).
53. Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland, Minutes of Evidence, Cd. 8311, para. 1556–67.
1. Operations Circular No. 89, WO 35 69/1.
2. Diarmuid Lynch, The IRB and the 1916 Insurrection (Cork 1957), p. 160.
3. Hayes-McCoy sagely notes that this use of cavalry was ‘quite in keeping with contemporary practice. If the insurgents had remained in the streets they would doubtless have tried to ride them down. After the first few moments, however, the cavalry fought dismounted.’ ‘A Military History of the 1916 Rising’, in K. B. Nowlan (ed.), The Making of 1916 (Dublin 1969), p. 269.
4. Narrative of OTC actions, 26 June 1916, TCD MUN/OTC/10, Report by Major Harris, Adjutant DUOTC, to War Office, 16 May 1916, WO 32 9576.
5. OC Troops Ireland to GHQ Home Forces, 25 April; GS Irish Command to GOC 59th Division, 28 April 1916, UCDA P150/512.
6. Lady Cynthia Asquith, Diaries 1915–1918 (London 1968), p. 163.
7. Lord Lieutenant to War Office, 24 April 1916, WO 32 9576.
8. Evidence of J. H. Campbell, Cd. 8311, para. 1627.
9. Evidence of Col. Edgeworth-Johnstone, Cd. 8311, para. 1282.
10. Birrell to Asquith, 28 April 1916, Bod, MSS Asquith 36.
11. OC Troops Ireland to GHQ Home Forces, 25 April, UCDAD P150/512; General Staff, Home Forces, Summary of Reports Received up to 1 p.m. 26th April 1916, WO 35 69/1.
12. Orders for OC. Troops disembarking from England at Queenstown [sic] 25/4/1916, WO 35 69/1. Since the orders were signed by ‘Maj. Owen Lewis, GSO, for Brig.-General Commanding Troops in Ireland’, they appear to have been issued by Lowe rather than by Friend.
13. S. Geohegan, The Campaigns and History of the Royal Irish Regiment, vol. 2, p. 103; Hayes-McCoy, ‘A Military History’, p. 281; A. N. Lee Memoir, Orpen MSS, Imperial War Museum, 66/121/1, p. 56.
14. Summary of Reports Received up to 16.00 26th April 1916, WO 35 69/1.
15. OC Troops Ireland to GHQ Home Forces, 26 April 1916, UCDA P150/512.
16. WO 32 9576.
17. Weekly Patrol Report, HM Yacht ‘Helga’, 30 April 1916, WO 32 9526.
18. Weekly Irish Times, Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook (Dublin 1917, rep. 1998), p. 19.
19. Summary of Evidence in the Case of Captain J. C. Bowen Colthurst; statement of Lt. M. C. Morris, 11th East Surrey Regiment, WO 35 67. The Simon Commission, interestingly, rephrased these orders as ‘to do his utmost to avoid conflict but keep the roadway clear’.
20. Notably in his widely circulated ‘Open Letter to Thomas MacDonagh’ (Irish Citizen, May 1915). James Stephens noted that ‘there are multitudes of men in Dublin of all classes and creeds who can boast that they kicked Sheehy Skeffington, or that they struck him on the head with walking sticks and umbrellas … he accepted blows, and indignities, and ridicule with the pathetic candour of a child who is disguised as a man.’ Joseph Brennan recorded in July 1915 that David Sheehy was trying to persuade his daughter ‘to take her husband away sub silentio’; Sheehy ‘appearing to want sympathy at having suffered under him for so many years’, NLI Ms 26178.
21. Memoir by Gerald Keatinge, in possession of R. F. Foster. Keatinge himself was a student in the Trinity OTC who was trying to get in to college from Terenure when he arrived at Portobello.
22. Monk Gibbon, ‘Murder in Portobello Barracks’, The Dublin Magazine (Spring 1966), p. 15.
23. Royal Commission on the Arrest and Subsequent Treatment of Mr Francis Sheehy Skeffington, Mr Thomas Dickson, and Mr Patrick James McIntyre, Cd. 8376, paras. 11, 13, 7.
24. Cd. 8376, para. 16.
25. The commission of inquiry did not trouble to discover Coade’s first name. It registered, however, that there was conflicting witness testimony about how he died – whether by the blow of a rifle butt, a rifle shot, or Bowen Colthurst’s revolver.
26. Statement of 2/Lt W. L. P. Dobbin, 3rd Royal Irish Rifles, WO 35 67.
27. Capt. Bowen Colthurst to OC 3rd Reserve Bn Royal Irish Rifles, 26 April 1916, WO 35 67.
28. Cd. 8376, para. 42.
29. Maj.-Gen. W. Grey, ‘Subject of Inquiry’, WO 35 67.
30. The opinion of the Canadian journalist F. A. McKenzie, The Irish Rebellion (London 1916), p. 70.
31. BMH WS 310 (Seumas Grace).
32. BMH WS 407 (Laurence Nugent).
33. NAM Brig.-Gen. E. W. S. K. Maconchy Memoir.
34. BMH WS 261 (Piaras Beaslai).
35. In his brilliantly realized account of the fight, Caulfield (The Easter Rebellion, London 1963, pp. 195–9) lays stress on the ‘honour of the Sherwoods’, though without citing direct evidence.
36. Lee Memoir, IWM 66/121/1, p. 53.
37. Ibid., p. 43.
38. BMH WS 166 (Seumas Doyle).
39. T. P. Coogan, Eamon de Valera, p. 69.
40. Simon Donnelly, letter to the Irish Press, 5 April 1962, de Valera papers, UCD P150/507.
41. Simon Donnelly, ‘Thou Shalt not Pass – Ireland’s Challenge to the British Forces at Mount Street Bridge, Easter 1916’, IMA CD 62/3/7.
42. Sam Irwin, public letter to Simon Donnelly, 6 April 1964. Irwin noted that ‘you and I are the only ones now alive who were present when he woke’. Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/D/23.
43. Peadar O Cearnaigh, Memoir, TCD MS 3560. Few members of the Jacob’s garrison provided statements to the BMH. The only witness commissioned by the Capuchin Annual ‘saw little military activity as I was appointed to a post within the factory’.
44. Pádraig O Ceallaigh, ‘Jacob’s Factory Area’, Capuchin Annual (1966), p. 216.
45. Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh, as told to Edward Kenny, The Splendid Years (Dublin 1955), p. 183.
46. BMH WS 304 (James Coughlan).
47. J. M. Heuston, Headquarters Battalion, Army of the Irish Republic, Easter Week, 1916 (Tallaght 1966), p. 44.
48. BMH WS 340 (Oscar Traynor). Harry Colley (WS 1687), who was also shot at, thought that the firing came from the GPO, but ‘could never quite understand’ it – he speculated that some of the men ‘believed that we were a country detachment that had made its way to Dublin, and in jubilation started firing’. He remembered O’Rahilly, ever the quartermaster, fuming ‘A good hundred rounds of ammunition wasted!’
49. Hayes-McCoy, ‘Military History of the Rising’, p. 280. Curiously, however, some observers thought that Fairview remained a ‘rebel stronghold’ until Friday at least. ‘They still kept up a desperate fight, and for thirteen hours on one occasion, ceaseless sniping went on between them and the military.’ J. F. Boyle, The Irish Rebellion of 1916 (London 1916), pp. 72–5.
50. Heuston, Headquarters Battalion, p. 35.
51. Hayes-McCoy, ‘A Military History of the 1916 Rising’, p. 282. It is still true that ‘we know very little of what was known at insurgent headquarters of the British movements; nor indeed how much Connolly and his colleagues knew of the movements of their own widely scattered forces’.
52. BMH WS 162 (John F. Shouldice).
53. P. Holohan, ‘Four Courts Area’, Capuchin Annual (1966), pp. 184–5.
54. W. Meakin, The 5th North Staffords and the North Midland Territorials 1914–1919 (Longton, Staffs., 1920), p. 72.
55. For the military inquiry into the killings, see Ch. 10 below.
56. Possibly with some of the booty from the captured DMP station.
57. BMH WS 162 (Shouldice); Holohan, ‘Four Courts Area’, p. 187.
58. C.-in-C. Ireland to Secretary of State for War, 26 May 1916, WO 32 9524.
59. Brig-Gen. Hutchinson, Irish Command, to GOC 59th Division, 28 April 1916, P150/512.
60. Maj.-Gen. F. Shaw, GHQ Home Forces, to Lt.-Gen. Sir John Maxwell, 29 April; C.-in-C. Ireland, Proclamation No. 1, 28 April 1916, P150/512; Lee Memoir, p. 61.
61. WO 32 4307.
62. BMH WS 340 (Oscar Traynor).
63. W. J. Brennan-Whitmore, Dublin Burning. The Easter Rising from Behind the Barricades (Dublin 1996), pp. 55, 68. Of course, IV men liked to be critical of the ICA, and Brennan-Whitmore, who had written a pamphlet on street fighting, was in an odd position. One member of the Imperial Hotel garrison thought he had been ‘more or less ignored all week’ after failing to persuade Joseph Plunkett to follow his views on street fighting. BMH WS 360 (Seamus Daly).
64. M. Hopkinson (ed.), Frank Henderson’s Easter Rising (Cork 1998), p. 58.
65. The Helga does appear to have carried a quick-firing cannon on its fo’c’sle, so Good may have been right about the ‘pom-pom’.
66. Joe Good, Enchanted by Dreams: The Journal of a Revolutionary (Dingle 1966), pp. 36–8.
67. Liam Tannam (BMH WS 242) felt the same: the ‘rather sparing’ FitzGerald would later be ‘heartily cursed in every jail in England where men were confined when, starving with hunger, they thought of the food they had left behind in the GPO. I myself even dreamt of it.’
68. Fergus FitzGerald, Memoirs of Desmond FitzGerald (London 1968), p. 144, describes how Collins ‘strode in one evening with some of his men who were covered in dust, and announced that those men were to be fed if they took the last food in the place. I did not attempt to argue …’
69. Dick Humphreys, ‘Easter Week in the GPO’, NLI Ms 18829.
70. BMH WS 284 (Michael Staines).
71. Humphreys, ‘Easter Week’.
72. BMH WS 284 (Michael Staines).
73. ‘Thursday, 4th day of the Republic’, Field Message Book, NLI Ms 4700.
74. BMH WS 497 (Eamonn Bulfin).
75. Good, Enchanted by Dreams, p. 56.
76. ‘At the back of his mind was the knowledge that he had left a devoted wife and family to give his life in an action that not only had not the assent of his own judgment, but that had been decided upon by men who treated him as he had been treated. They had treated him as of no account and yet at their words of command he had no option but to give his life …’ FitzGerald, Memoirs of Desmond FitzGerald, p. 137.
77. NLI Ms 4700.
1. One of the second rank of leaders, Desmond FitzGerald, who had several conversations with Pearse and Plunkett about the prospects for the rebellion, found that they talked mainly of what might have been. He detected no confidence that outside aid would arrive. Fergus FitzGerald (ed.), Memoirs of Desmond FitzGerald (London 1968), pp. 139–42.
2. Humphreys, ‘Easter Week in the GPO’, NLI Ms 18829.
3. One of the earliest accounts, by Wells and Marlowe, dedicated a chapter to the ‘rising in the provinces’, and Desmond Ryan a slightly less substantial one; by contrast, Max Caulfield’s history does not refer to it at all, while Foy and Barton give it a single paragraph.
4. J. Lawless, ‘Fight at Ashbourne’, Capuchin Annual (1966), p. 308.
5. BMH WS 149 (Charles Weston).
6. BMH WS 97 (Richard Hayes).
7. This group furnished Connolly’s main reinforcement to the Mendicity Institute; see, e.g., BMH WS 148 (James Crenigan).
8. Maryann Valiulis, Portrait of a Revolutionary. General Richard Mulcahy and the Founding of the Irish Free State (Dublin 1992), pp. 13–14.
9. Lawless, ‘Fight at Ashbourne’, p. 309.
10. ‘All through the week Ashe had moved erect and purposeful; the leader, radiating authority; the comrade pervading his whole group with a mutual confidence and understanding’, UCDA, Mulcahy papers, P7/D/19.
11. BMH WS 97 (Hayes), 149 (Weston).
12. Hayes counted 17 cars; Lawless gives a figure of ‘about 24’, and others have suggested 15. The cars were borrowed from the ‘gentry’ of the surrounding areas, according to Constable Eugene Bratton, and driven by their owners’ chauffeurs, BMH WS 467.
13. Ibid.
14. BMH WS 1494 (Michael McAllister).
15. There is a careful attempt to sift some of them in Terence Dooley, ‘Alexander “Baby” Gray (1858–1916) and the Battle at Ashbourne, 28 April 1916,’ Ríocht na Midhe (Records of Meath Archaeological and Historical Society), XIV (2003), pp. 194–229.
16. Lawless, ‘Fight at Ashbourne’, p. 312.
17. Ibid., p. 314.
18. BMH WS 177 (Jerry Golden).
19. BMH WS 467 (Eugene Bratton).
20. Seán MacEntee, Episode at Easter (Dublin 1966), p. 63.
21. Ibid., p. 64; see also BMH WS 494 (Peter Kieran).
22. BMH WS 212 (Seán Boylan). Hannigan’s recollection, however (WS 161), is that he himself was responsible for Tara.
23. BMH WS 161 (Donal O’Hannigan).
24. MacEntee, Episode at Easter, pp. 80–83.
25. But one member of the column thought that only a minority left; his estimate of its initial strength (75) was much lower than Hannigan’s, and he thought that some 45 remained. BMH WS 695 (Thomas McCrave).
26. BMH WS 161 (O’Hannigan); MacEntee’s recollection of the order – ‘Carry out the original instructions: we strike at noon’ – is closer to the orders sent by Pearse to other provincial leaders.
27. Proceedings of Court Martial on John MacEntee, 9 June 1916. Weekly Irish Times, Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook (Dublin 1917), pp. 109–12.
28. BMH WS 1052 (Seán MacEntee).
29. BMH WS 143 (Gerald Byrne).
30. Boylan records that he asked Pearse in advance whether he could take his men into the city, to be told very definitely, ‘Your task is communications.’ Pearse pointed to the village of Mulhuddart on the map, saying, ‘under no circumstances must you go beyond that line’. Boylan ‘understood I was to keep communications to and from the city open’, BMH WS 212 (Seán Boylan).
31. BMH WS 695 (Thomas McCrave).
32. BMH WS 269 (Peter Boylan).
33. BMH WS 124 (Joseph Connolly).
34. Denis McCullough, ‘The Events in Belfast’, Capuchin Annual (1966), p. 383.
35. He concluded tartly, but perhaps not unreasonably, ‘I refrain from comment on the activities of the Belfast contingent in Tyrone, but I think these justified my contention.’
36. BMH WS 915 (Denis McCullough).
37. BMH WS 173 (Cathal McDowell).
38. BMH WS 289 (Manus O’Boyle).
39. BMH WS 178 (John Garvey); also WS 378 (Thomas Kelly).
40. BMH WS 224 (Jack Shields).
41. ‘Rebellion in Tyrone, etc.’; County Inspector’s Office, Omagh, 25 May 1916. In F. X. Martin (ed.), ‘The McCartan Documents, 1916’, Clogher Record (1966), pp. 55–65.
42. Tomás Ó Maoileóin (Seán Forde), in U. MacEoin (ed.), Survivors (Dublin 1980), pp. 79–80.
43. Mattie Neilan, ‘The Rising in Galway’, Capuchin Annual (1966), p. 324.
44. BMH WS 298 (Ailbhe O Monachain).
45. BMH WS 446 (Frank Hynes).
46. BMH WS 714 (Thomas Hynes).
47. For the same argument see also Neilan, ‘The Rising in Galway’, p. 325.
48. BMH WS 1330 (John D. Costello).
49. BMH WS 344 (John Broderick). He estimated that they had only 20 service rifles, however.
50. BMH WS 345 (Brian Molloy), 572 (Thomas Newell).
51. BMH WS 298 (Ailbhe O Monachain).
52. BMH WS 446 (Frank Hynes).
53. Neilan, ‘The Rising in Galway’, p. 326.
54. The Society was ‘the source of most of the agrarian crime and unrest in Galway.’ RIC Reports, County Inspector, Galway West Riding, June–July 1916, CO 904 100.
55. BMH WS 446 (Frank Hynes).
56. BMH WS 298 (Ailbhe O Monachain).
57. Darrel Figgis, Recollections of the Irish War (London 1927), pp. 143–6.
58. Mannix Joyce, ‘The Story of Limerick and Kerry in 1916’, Capuchin Annual (1966), p. 339.
59. Ibid., p. 342.
60. BMH WS 164 (Charles Wall).
61. BMH WS 1042 (John Joe Neilan).
62. W.B. Wells and N. Marlowe, A History of the Irish Rebellion of 1916 (Dublin 1916), p. 193.
63. BMH WS 1176 (Mark Kenna).
64. Peter Hart, The IRA at War 1916–1923 (Oxford 2003), p. 120.
65. It stated that ‘[so-and-so] was on active Service, under Arms, on Easter Sunday night, to achieve the Freedom of Ireland as an Independent Irish Republic’, BMH WS 1598.
66. Thomas Barry, Patrick Canton, Seán Murphy, James Wickham, ‘Record of Cork City and County Battalion [sic], Easter 1916’, BMH WS 1598. Michael Leahy (WS 94), who took the officer’s course in January and was appointed captain, thought that the ‘Committee system continued up to Easter 1916’, and no other officer appointments were made in his unit.
67. BMH WS 1698 (Liam de Roiste diary).
68. BMH WS 1598.
69. Florence O’Donoghue, ‘History of the Irish Volunteers’, NLI Ms 31437; also Statement of Cork 1916 Committee, NLI Ms 31434.
70. Note by Major Florence O’Donoghue, 5 February 1948, BMH CD 27/2. O’Donoghue was responsible for collating the statements by Cork participants.
71. BMH WS 1598. Rióbard Langford (WS 16) recalled the note as being ‘on small cream notepaper’, and reading ‘We start at noon today.’
72. BMH WS 90 (Cornelius Collins).
73. BMH WS 1698 (Liam de Roiste diary).
74. BMH WS 54 (Seán O’Hegarty).
75. Mary MacSwiney, ‘Easter Week in Cork’, UCDA P48a/407.
76. BMH WS 119 (Eithne Ni Suibhne).
77. BMH WS 1698 (Liam de Roiste diary).
78. BMH WS 144 (Michael Walsh). Almost incredibly, Walsh records that on the Tuesday of Easter week he was able to buy two more shotguns from a gunsmiths, Atkins & Co. of Clonakilty.
79. BMH WS20 (Tom Hales). Seán O’Hegarty himself had been left without any instructions, despite sending Mary MacSwiney into Cork on Tuesday and Annie on Thursday. When approached about the Macroom attack, he said that he did not know the situation and the brigade officers did: ‘he was sure they would do what was right’. BMH WS 103 (Seán O’Hegarty, Seán Lynch, Jeremiah Shea).
80. Assistant Bishop of Cork to Editor, Cork Free Press, 20 May 1916.
81. Court martial report and statements, WO 35 68.
82. BMH WS 590 (Thomas Treacy).
83. Tom Stallard to Josephine Clarke (née Stallard), 5 June 1951, BMH WS 699 (Josephine Clarke).
84. BMH WS 590 (Thomas Treacy).
85. BMH WS 699 (Josephine Clarke). A tantalizing damaged fragment of O’Connell’s own holograph account of Easter 1916 survives with his memoir (NLI Ms 22114), but it stops on Saturday.
86. According to Tom Stallard (‘who has a good memory about these things’), Head Constable Frizzell of the RIC agreed with de Loughrey ‘that if Ginger would go up to the jail himself it would suit Frizzell all right, so he went up’, (BMH WS 699, Josephine Clarke).
87. Seumas O Dubhighaill, ‘Activities in Eniscorthy’, Capuchin Annual (1966), p. 319.
88. P. P. Galligan papers, BMH CD105.
89. O Dubhighaill, ‘Activities in Eniscorthy’, pp. 319–21.
90. BMH WS 1343 (James Cullen).
91. The account of this incident by Wells and Marlowe, Irish Rebellion, pp. 184–5, closely matches that of the Weekly Irish Times.
92. O Dubhighaill, ‘Activities in Eniscorthy’, p. 321.
93. Col. J. A. French, Wexford, to GOC-in-C Ireland, enclosing notes from and to Capt. Robert Brennan, 30 April 1916, UCDA P150/512. A slightly amended copy of the last note is illustrated in O Dubhighaill, ‘Activities in Eniscorthy’, p. 322.
94. Midleton attributed the saving of the south to ‘troops dispatched to Cork by Lord French while the government was still vacillating’. Ireland – Dupe or Heroine? (London 1932), p. 101.
95. Vice-Admiral Bayly to Secretary, Admiralty, 29 April 1916, WO 32 9526.
96. Summary of Events, Nos. 4, 6, 7, 8, 8a, 9, 10, 15, WO 32 9510.
97. OC Troops Ireland to GHQ Home Forces, 26 April 1916, UCDA P150/512.
1. To her brother, 18 May 1916, TCD Ms 10543. Mitchell, a writer and critic close to Yeats and Æ, had spent Easter week in ‘a pretty hot spot near Portobello Barracks’.
2. W. J. Brennan-Whitmore, Dublin Burning. The Easter Rising from Behind the Barricades (Dublin 1996), p. 87.
3. J. J. Lee, The Modernisation of Irish Society (Dublin 1973), pp. 155–6.
4. Ibid., pp. 89–90.
5. James Ryan, ‘In the GPO: the Medical Unit’, in F. X. Martin (ed.), The Easter Rising, 1916, and University College, Dublin (Dublin 1966), p. 89.
6. Holograph ‘Notes, 3.30 p.m. 29–4–16’, and Maxwell to French, 29 April 1916, UCDA P150/512.
7. BMH WS 242 (Liam Tannam). The escorting officers (also including Michael Staines and Diarmuid Lynch) were annoyed to find themselves regarded as prisoners in the Castle, and maintained they had never surrendered. BMH WS 284 (Michael Staines).
8. BMH WS 497 (Eamonn Bulfin).
9. BMH WS 660 (Thomas Leahy).
10. BMH WS 1052 (Seán MacEntee); see p. 247 above.
11. BMH WS 340 (Oscar Traynor).
12. BMH WS 497 (Eamonn Bulfin).
13. BMH WS 1140 (Patrick Ward).
14. Or 1 p.m.; ‘I am not certain which hour’, Fr Aloysius, OFM, Cap., ‘Personal Recollections’, Capuchin Annual (1966), p. 284.
15. TCD Ms 3560.
16. BMH WS 995 (Eamon Price).
17. Padraig O Ceallaigh (BMH WS 376) saw ‘a few Volunteers hurling their guns away in disappointed rage’, but thought that for some ‘there was a feeling of relief that the strain of the week was over’.
18. BMH WS 397 (Thomas Pugh).
19. Thomas Young, ‘Fighting in South Dublin’, An tOglác, 6 March 1926.
20. BMH WS 482 (Rose McManners).
21. BMH WS 203 (Edward O’Neill).
22. BMH WS 304 (James Coughlan).
23. Piaras F. MacLochlainn, Last Words. Letters and Statements of the Leaders Executed After the Rising (Dublin 1990), p. 117.
24. Frank Robbins, Under the Starry Plough. Recollections of the Irish Citizen Army (Dublin 1977), pp. 120–22.
25. BMH WS 1019 (Sir Alfred Bucknill).
26. Robbins, Under the Starry Plough, pp. 126–7.
27. M. Ó Dubhighaill, ‘The Plan of the Rising’, Irish Independent, 1916 Golden Jubilee Supplement (April 1966).
28. Conversation with Col. Liam Archer, Mulcahy MSS, UCDA P7/D/23.
29. Savage Armstrong to his mother, n.d. [May 1916], PRONI D/618/165.
30. Ó Dubhighaill, ‘The Plan of the Rising’.
31. BMH WS 819 (Liam Archer).
32. Bill Stapleton, ‘A Volunteer’s Story’, Irish Independent, 1916 Golden Jubilee Supplement (April 1966).
33. Ó Dubhighaill, ‘The Plan of the Rising’.
34. Declan Kiberd, ‘1916: the Idea and the Action’, in K. Devine (ed.), Modern Irish Writers and the Wars (Gerrards Cross 1999), p. 29.
35. Collins to Kevin O’Brien, 6 October 1916. Quoted in Rex Taylor, Michael Collins (London 1958), p. 58.
36. Printed in Appendices to Brennan-Whitemore, Dublin Burning, p. 131.
37. Desmond Ryan, James Connolly (Dublin 1924), pp. 130–1.
38. BMH WS 369 (William Whelan).
39. Sam Irwin, open letter to Simon Donnelly, 6 April 1964, Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7 D/22.
40. Joe Good, Enchanted by Dreams: the Journals of a Revolutionary (Dingle 1966), p. 30.
41. BMH WS 29 (Geraldine Plunkett).
42. BMH WS 293 (Aine Heron).
43. F. A. McKenzie, The Irish Rebellion. What Happened and Why (London 1916), pp. 84–5. His considered opinion was that ‘the rebel street barricades were of very little service to them’. Many were flimsy, and the strongest were easily breached by artillery. ‘Large numbers that I examined immediately after the fighting showed no signs of battle at all. Houses in all directions, however, with their riddled windows and broken walls, showed where the real fighting had been.’
44. Martin King of the ICA gave Connolly his government pass to assist in the plan of ‘cutting communications to England’, BMH WS 543.
45. ‘Easter Week 1916. The GPO Area’, Béaslaí papers, NLI Ms 33912(4).
46. R. M. Fox, The History of the Irish Citizen Army (Dublin 1942), pp. 172–4.
47. BMH WS 579 (Seán Byrne).
48. BMH WS 521 (Jerry Golden).
49. Maryann Valiulis, Portrait of a Revolutionary. (Dublin 1992), pp. 12–14.
50. Good, Enchanted by Dreams, p. 46.
51. Col. P. J. Hally, ‘The Easter 1916 Rising in Dublin’, Part I, The Irish Sword, 7 (29) (1966), p. 316.
52. BMH WS 1746 (Matthew Connolly).
53. ‘Programme of Military Training’, 13 January 1915, Supplement to the Irish Volunteer, UCD P48b/370.
54. BMH WS 1768 (Andrew McDonnell).
55. BMH WS 638 (Patrick Caldwell).
56. Thomas Bodkin MSS, TCD Ms 7013. There are other indirect references to the use of dumdum or ‘exploding’ bullets, e.g. in Henry Hanna’s ‘Citizen’s Diary’, TCD Ms 10066/92, and the autograph narrative of the St John’s Ambulance volunteer, W. G. Smith, NLI Ms 24952.
57. Ó Dubhighaill, ‘The Plan of the Rising’.
58. Thomas Young, ‘Fighting in South Dublin’, An tOglác, 6 March 1926. The 24 April mobilization order for A Company, 4th Battalion, preserved in NLI Ms 10972(2), specifies twelve hours’ rations.
59. BMH WS 482 (Rose McManners).
60. Good, Enchanted by Dreams, p. 36.
61. Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh, The Splendid Years (Dublin 1955), p. 174.
62. TCD Ms 3560.
63. BMH WS 195 (Molly Reynolds).
64. Eilis Bean Ui Chonail, ‘A Cumann na mBan Recalls Easter Week’, Capuchin Annual (1966), p. 272.
65. BMH WS 293 (Aine Heron).
66. Nic Shiubhlaigh, The Splendid Years, pp. 161–8, 174–6.
67. Margaret Ward, Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism (London, 1983), pp. 110–11.
68. BMH WS 246 (Marie Perolz).
69. Brennan-Whitmore, Dublin Burning, p. 102.
70. BMH WS 432 (Pauline Keating).
71. McKenzie, Irish Rebellion, pp. 73–4; also J. V. O’Brien, ‘Dear, Dirty Dublin’. A City in Distress 1899–1916 (Berkeley, CA, 1982), p. 259.
72. McKenzie, Irish Rebellion, pp. 75–6.
73. BMH WS 497 (Eamonn Bulfin). The planners had made some preparations for order maintenance; Bulfin noted that batons had been got ready, but in the event ‘of course we could not afford men for police duty’.
74. Brennan-Whitmore, Dublin Burning, pp. 69–71.
75. Fergus FitzGerald (ed.), Memoirs of Desmond FitzGerald (London 1968), p. 137.
76. BMH WS 369 (William Whelan).
77. Seumas O’Sullivan’s ten-man garrison still had six looters, ‘whom we had arrested on the premises and used for fatigue work’, with them when they surrendered, BMH WS 393.
78. ‘A Kilmallock Lady’s Experiences in Dublin during the 1916 Easter Rising’, Journal of the Lough Gur and District Historical Society, 6 (1990), p. 4. Anon, ‘The Rebellion’, 29 April 1916, NLI Ms 22725.
79. Warre B. Wells and N. Marlowe, A History of the Irish Rebellion of 1916 (Dublin 1916), p. 161.
80. Letters from Dublin, Easter 1916, p. 34.
81. PP 1919 (XLII), Cmd. 30, quoted in O’Brien, ‘Dear, Dirty Dublin’, p. 260.
82. Humphreys, ‘Easter week’, NLI Ms 18829.
83. M. Hopkinson (ed.), Frank Henderson’s Easter Rising (Cork 1998), p. 55.
84. NLI Ms 10915.
85. FitzGerald (ed.), Memoirs of Desmond FitzGerald, p. 142.
86. NLI Ms 18829.
87. ‘A Kilmallock Lady’s Experiences’, p. 4.
88. Wells and Marlowe, Irish Rebellion, pp. 159–60.
89. Bonaparte-Wyse to his brother, 28 April 1916, Irish Times, 24 April 1965, quoted in J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985. Politics and Society (Cambridge 1988), p. 32.
90. Diary of Mrs Henry, NLI Ms 7984.
91. ‘Let us grieve, not over the fragment of Dublin city that is knocked down, but over at least three quarters of what has been preserved’, Bernard Shaw, ‘Neglected Morals of the Irish Rising’, New Statesman, 6 May 1916.
92. J. F. Boyle, The Irish Rebellion of 1916 (London 1916), pp. 170–80.
93. Stephens, The Insurrection in Dublin (Dublin 1916), pp. 37–8.
94. Ibid., p. 40.
95. Johnson’s diary of Easter week, in J. A. Gaughan, Thomas Johnson, 1872–1963 (Mount Merrion 1980), p. 50.
96. Stephens, Insurrection in Dublin, p. 40.
97. BMH WS 416 (Mairin Cregan).
98. Emily H. Ussher, ‘The True Story of a Revolution’, TCD Ms 9269. Stafford’s mistake had probably been to give the Cork Volunteer commanders an undertaking that their rifles would be returned after their surrender.
1. J. F. Boyle, The Irish Rebellion of 1916 (London 1916), p. 69.
2. In Flanders ‘one usually knew exactly where the enemy was’, while in Dublin ‘neither military nor rebels could guess where the next bullet was coming from’. Charles Duff, Six Days to Shake an Empire (London 1966), p. 161.
3. And where the US marines also had to re-learn urban warfare – nicknamed FISH (‘fighting in someone’s house’). The net result seems to have been the destruction of much of the city.
4. Col. P. J. Hally, ‘The Easter 1916 Rising in Dublin’, Part I, The Irish Sword, 7 (29) (1966), pp. 318ff.
5. C.-in-C. Ireland to Sec. of State for War, 26 May 1916, WO 32 9524.
6. Sir George Arthur, General Sir John Maxwell (London 1932), p. 247.
7. These were the figures Maxwell cited in his 26 May report; military intelligence later gave them as 99 rather than 89 other ranks killed (a total of 116) and 322 wounded (a total of 368). In addition, 13 RIC and 3 DMP constables were killed, giving a total for the Crown Forces of 132; official figures lumped rebel combatants together with civilians (318 killed, 2,217 wounded) and the numbers could not be precisely established. Republican deaths in combat have been generally agreed to total 60 or 62.
8. Tom Johnstone, Orange, Green and Khaki: The Story of the Irish Regiments in the Great War (Dublin 1992), pp. 209–12; Keith Jeffery, Ireland and the Great War (Cambridge 2000), p. 51.
9. Charles Townshend, ‘Martial Law: Legal and Administrative Problems of Civil Emergency in Britain and the Empire, 1800–1940’, Historical Journal, 25 (1979).
10. Birrell to Asquith, 28 April 1916, Bod, MS Asquith 36.
11. Pencil holograph note by PPS, 10 Downing Street to Maxwell (marked ‘Urgent’), 28 April 1916, WO 32 4307. The drafting discussion is recorded in the holograph minute of the Cabinet War Committee, 28 April 1916, CAB 42/12.
12. NLI Ms 22725.
13. Scheme for Further Operations to Cope with the Rebellion in the Dublin District Area, 30 April 1916, UCDA P150/512. ‘This was discussed at a conference between C.-in-C. and B. Gen. Lowe & approved.’
14. Maxwell to French, 30 April 1916, UCDA P150/512.
15. Maxwell to Kitchener, 2 May 1916, loc. cit.
16. Maxwell to Robertson, 8 May 1916, loc. cit.
17. Hall to Hutchison, 5 May 1916, ibid. Three weeks later, a colleague of Hutchison on the staff of Irish Command wrote to the DPS at the War Office, ‘it must be realised that although in many counties no actual rising took place, the Volunteers were merely sitting on the fence, and were ready to rise should events have taken a more favourable turn’. Byrne to Childs, 26 May 1916, WO 32 9571.
18. Instructions, No. 13989 G. O., 3 May 1916, WO 32 9568.
19. Instructions to Brig. Gen. W. H. M. Lowe, 3 May 1916, WO 32 9568. Maxwell asked for the armoured cars in his letter to French, 30 April 1916, UCDA P150/512.
20. Instructions to Brig.-Gen. W. H. M. Lowe, WO 32 9568.
21. G. I. Edmunds, 2/6th Battalion Sherwood Foresters (privately published in Chesterfield, 1960), p. 58, for the cordon technique; Lowe to Maxwell, 27 May 1916, Bod, MS Asquith 44.
22. GOC-in-C Ireland to GHQ Home Forces, 3 July 1916, reported a total of 3,829 arms had been taken, of which 2,085 were rifles (including 448 service Lee-Enfields and 361 Mausers), 126 carbines, 1,416 shotguns, and 202 pistols. WO 32 9574.
23. OC Limerick to GOC Queenstown, PRONI I/1065/38.
24. Maxwell to Asquith, 28 June 1916, Bod, MS Asquith 37.
25. Instructions to Defensible Queenstown, General Belfast, GOC Curragh, 6 May 1916, WO 32 9568.
26. Telegram, Commandeth [C.-in-C. Ireland] to Garrison Commanders and all Officers Commanding Troops, 14 May 1916, WO 35 69.
27. RIC memo, 8 June 1916, WO 35 69/4.
28. Cabinet Memorandum by H.H.A., ‘Ireland. 1 – The Actual Situation’, 19 May 1916, CAB 37 148/13.
29. Byrne to Childs, 23 May 1916, WO 32 9571.
30. Dillon to Maxwell, 8 May 1916, UCDA P150/512. HC Deb., 11 May 1916, cols 938–9.
31. Brig.-Gen. Hutchison to Editor, Freeman’s Journal, 14 May 1916; Maxwell to Bonham-Carter, 20 May 1916, UCDA P150/512.
32. Byrne to Childs, 28 April 1916 (pencil holograph), WO 32 4307.
33. Commandeth [C.-in-C. Ireland] to Cinchomfor [C.-in-C. Home Forces], 10.30 p.m., 28 April 1916, WO 32 4307.
34. Maxwell to French, 30 April 1916, UCDA P150/512.
35. Minute by Adjutant General, 4 May 1916, WO 32 4307.
36. Memorandum by Irish Law Officers, 9 May 1916, WO 32 9571.
37. ‘Irish Rebels Interned in England’, 15 May 1916, CAB 37/147/36. (The original draft is in HO 144/1455/2.)
38. Maxwell to Kitchener, 2 May 1916, UCDA P150/512. The difficulties probably concerned the framing of the charges, since the Defence of the Realm Act had not envisaged open rebellion.
39. There is a detailed account of the trials and executions in Brian Barton, From Behind a Closed Door. Secret Court Martial Records of the Easter Rising (Belfast 2002).
40. French to Maxwell, holograph, 3 May 1916, UCDA P150/512.
41. Maj.-Gen., Gen. Staff to GOC-in-C Irish Command, 3 May 1916, WO 32 4307.
42. AG to Commandeth, 12.10 a.m., 5 May 1916, WO 32 4307.
43. PM to the King, 6 May 1916, CAB 41 37 19.
44. Redmond to Asquith, 3 May 1916, NLI Ms 15165.
45. ‘Press Reaction to the Rising in General’, Owen Dudley Edwards and Fergus Pyle (eds), 1916: the Easter Rising (London 1968), Appendix II, p. 255.
46. Lord Lieutenant to C.-in-C. Ireland, 8 May 1916, BL Add Ms 58372/R.
47. Leon Ó Broin, Dublin Castle and the 1916 Rising (London 1966), pp. 120–21.
48. Lord Lieutenant to C.-in-C. Ireland, 6 May 1916, UCDA P150/512.
49. HC Deb., 11 May 1916, cols 940–51.
50. ‘Brief History of rebels on whom it has been necessary to impose the supreme penalty’, Maxwell to Asquith, 11 May 1916, Bod, MS Asquith 43.
51. GOC-in-C Irish Command to War Office (‘The following is for the Prime Minister’), 3.20 a.m., 11 May 1916, WO 32 4307, no. 82B.
52. ‘Brief History of rebels on whom it has been necessary to inflict the supreme penalty’, Bod, MS Asquith 43.
53. Maxwell to French, 4 May 1916, UCDA P150/512.
54. Notes by Eoin MacNeill, NLI Ms 11437.
55. Byrne to Childs, 23 May 1916, WO 32 9571; GOC Dublin [GOC-in-C?] to DPS, War Office, 10 p.m., 24 May 1916, WO 32 4307.
56. Maxwell to Asquith, 28 May 1916, MS Asquith 37.
57. W. E. Wylie, ‘Personal recollections for his daughter, begun 26 October 1939’, typescript courtesy of Miss Margaret (‘Biddy’) Wylie, ff. 34–5.
58. GOC Dublin to War Office, 11 May 1916, WO 32 4307. War Office to C.-in-C. Ireland, 23 May; C.-in-C. to War Office, 30 May 1916, WO 141 19.
59. C.-in-C. Ireland to WO, 5 June 1916, WO 141 20.
60. Diary of Elsie Mahaffy, 6 May 1916, TCD Ms 2074.
61. Wylie, ‘Personal recollections’, f. 30. Also Leon Ó Broin, W. E. Wylie and the Irish Revolution 1916–1921 (Dublin 1989), p. 27.
62. Brian Barton, From Behind a Closed Door, p. 80, calls it a ‘wilful and scurrilous distortion’, though admitting that it is ‘difficult to interpret’. He speculates (without offering any evidence for this charge) that it ‘reflected deep-rooted sexual prejudice and rank misogyny’. While this (and indeed wilful distortion) is by no means impossible in a High Court judge, Wylie’s memoir is generally very frank and self-deprecating. Perhaps more importantly, it is not self-evident that the court-martial record is more accurate. Had such a scene occurred, it would probably not have been recorded. Barton himself prints testimony (p. 34) that one court president, Col. Maconchy, refused to record parts of the proceedings he tried.
63. French to Maxwell, 3 May 1916, UCDA P150/512.
64. There were 10 life sentences, 1 sentence of twenty years, 33 of ten years, 3 of eight years, 1 of seven years, 18 of five years, 56 of three years, 2 of two years, 17 of one year, and 4 of six months. Irish Office, ‘The Sinn Fein or Irish Volunteers and the Rebellion’, in B. MacGiolla Choille (ed.), Intelligence Notes 1913–16 (Baile Atha Cliath 1966), pp. 221–38.
65. Redmond MSS, NLI Ms 15206.
66. Commandeth, Dublin, to Cinchomfor, London, 10 May 1916, UCDA P150/512. Copy in Asquith MS 43.
67. UCDA P102/495, quoted in Ben Novick, Conceiving Revolution. Irish Nationalist Propaganda during the First World War (Dublin 2001), p. 235.
68. See, e.g., Robert Barton’s Scrapbook No. 3, NLI Ms 5650.
69. BMH WS 257 (Grace Plunkett).
70. Wylie claims that he continued to urge that Connolly ‘should not be tried until he was well again’. Wylie did not serve as prosecutor at the court martial. ‘Personal recollections’, f. 33.
71. War Office minute, 15 October 1916, WO 32 4307.
72. HC Deb., 11 May 1916, cols 936–7.
73. Vane protested against his ‘unemployment’ to the War Office on 5 October 1916, TCD Ms 6837/23.
74. Sir Charles Mathews (DPP) to Byrne, 22 May 1916, WO 35 67.
75. Opinion by J. H. C., 31 May 1916, WO 35 67.
76. Law Officers’ Opinion ‘Re Bowen Colthurst’, WO 35 67.
77. Byrne noted on the 23rd that the trial would begin ‘on Tuesday week’ – ‘I do not see how in such an important case we can give him any shorter notice, especially as there are three other somewhat similar cases to be brought before the same Court.’ Byrne to Childs, 23 May 1916, WO 32 9571.
78. Asquith to Maxwell, 13 May 1916, BL Add MS 58372/R.
79. Lemass to Dillon, 23 May 1916, TCD Ms 6837/23.
80. Lemass to Asquith, 13 June, 1916. Loc. cit; Lemass to Maxwell, 8, 20, 24 June 1916, WO 35 67/1.
81. Royal Commission on the Arrest and Subsequent Treatment of Mr Francis Sheehy Skeffington, Mr Thomas Dickson, and Mr Patrick James Mclntyre, Report, 29 September 1916, Cd. 8376, para. 55.
82. Sheehy-Skeffington to Dillon, 22 October 1916, TCD Ms 6837/23.
83. ‘Subject of Inquiry’, n.d., WO 35 67.
84. Sheehy-Skeffington to Dillon, 4, 30 November 1916, TCD Ms 6837/23.
85. C.-in-C. Ireland to Sec. of State for War, 26 May 1916, WO 32 9524.
86. Sir George Arthur, General Sir John Maxwell (London 1932), p. 257. According to a trusted journalist, the solicitor representing some of the King Street families (‘a temperate respectable man who honestly wants to prevent trouble’) said that ‘other cases will present a worse appearance than the one which has just been sat upon’. Bonham-Carter to Hutchison, 17 May 1916, UCDA P150/512.
87. French to Maxwell, 26 May 1916, loc. cit.
88. The statements taken in evidence, together with the reports to the GOC Dublin, and Maxwell’s autograph comments, are in WO 141 21 and 22, with some copies in WO 35 67.
89. Report for the information of the GOC 59th Division by Col. E. W. S. K. Maconchy, President, Standing Court of Inquiry, 22 May 1916, WO 141 22.
90. Court of Inquiry proceedings, deaths of Peter Lawless, James Finnegan, Patrick Hoey and James McCarthy, WO 141 23.
91. ‘Very confidential, By Sir E. Troup for information of the P.M.’, WO 141 21.
92. On 27 October the Chief Secretary for Ireland asked the Judge Advocate General (who controlled the court martial records) ‘to furnish copies to carry out the Prime Minister’s pledge’. The JAG referred the question to the Army Council. A month later, however, he ‘handed the proceedings over to the Chief Secretary and left him to determine … what portions of them can be published without detriment to the public interest’. Minute to AG, 20 November 1916, WO 141 27.
93. JAG, Minute of meeting with Prime Minister, 3 November 1916, WO 141 27.
94. A War Office memorandum on 9 January 1917 noted that it was not clear what ‘policy’ was involved, and pointed out that the Law Officers had advised that holding the courts martial in camera had been unjustified under DORA. The Judge Advocate General, however, held that martial law justified Maxwell’s decision. JAG minute to Under-Secretary, 15 January 1917, WO 141 27. Also Law Officers’ Opinion, 31 January 1917, loc. cit.
95. Memorandum by Col. Brade, 9 January 1917, WO 141 27.
96. Minute by Adjutant General, 10 January 1917, loc. cit.
97. Maxwell to French, 16 May 1916, UCDA P150/512.
98. He also sensibly demanded either Sir Maurice Hankey or Sir Eric Drummond as Under-Secretary, both considered irreplaceable in Whitehall. Eunan O’Halpin, The Decline of the Union (Dublin 1987), p. 121.
99. Roy Jenkins, Asquith (London 1964), p. 397.
100. ‘Ireland. II. The Future’, Cabinet memorandum by H. H. A., 21 May 1916, CAB 37/148/18.
101. Cesca Chenevix Trench to Francis Chenevix Trench, 29 May 1916, Trench MSS, courtesy of Anthony Fletcher.
102. Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland, Report, 26 June 1916, Cd. 8279, paras. 4, 5 and passim.
103. Chalmers to Bonham-Carter, 31 May and 5 June 1916, Bod, MS Asquith 37. He did, however, applaud Samuel for his town-planning proposals (‘an admirable red herring of his own netting’).
104. Compensation claims, WO 141 17.
105. Report to Assistant Director, Supply and Transport, Irish Command, on Supply account of Sinn Fein prisoners 14 May–15 June 1916. WO 35 69/4; Edmunds, 2/6th Sherwood Foresters.
106. BMH WS 242 (Liam Tannam).
107. ‘Ireland. I. The Actual Situation’, Cabinet memorandum by H. H. A., 19 May 1916, CAB 37/148/13.
108. Maxwell to Bonham-Carter, 20 May 1916, UCDA P150/512.
109. Bonham-Carter to Hutchison, 17 May 1916, UCDA P150/512. He added two pages of advice on the points to be made in the statement.
110. Brade to Bonham-Carter, 8 June 1916, WO 32 9523.
1. W. E. Wylie, ‘Personal recollections for his daughter, begun 26 October 1939’, typescript courtesy of Miss Margaret (Biddy) Wylie; Sir George Arthur, General Sir John Maxwell (London 1932), p. 264, referred to his ‘fairmindedness and firm grasp of the situation’ – based mainly on his condemnation of the previous policy of ‘drift and oscillations between “conciliation” and “coercion”’.
2. Maxwell to Lord Monteagle, quoted in ibid.
3. The numerous files (in WO 32 9525, WO 35 69, and elsewhere) prepared in response to the Prime Minister’s request for details of murders committed by rebels, attest the persistence of this belief.
4. Robert H. Murray, ‘The Sinn Fein Rebellion’, The Nineteenth Century and After (June 1916), p. 1219.
5. Maxwell to Asquith, 25 May 1916, Bod, MS Asquith 43.
6. Maxwell to Bonham-Carter, 26 May 1916, loc. cit.
7. Inspector-General RIC, ‘Public Attitude and Opinion in Ireland as to the Recent Outbreak’, 15 May 1916, CAB 37 147/38.
8. Maxwell to Asquith, 11 June 1916, WO 32 4307.
9. Unfortunately, he said, DRR9a did not apply, and no other regulation dealt with processions or meetings. Maxwell to Asquith, 17 June 1916, Bod, MS Asquith 37.
10. Maxwell to Bonham-Carter, 7 June 1916, loc. cit.
11. ‘Report on the State of Ireland since the Rebellion’, 24 June 1916, p. 2, CAB 37 150/18.
12. Ibid., p. 3.
13. Memorandum by Prime Minister, 19 May 1916, HLRO, Bonar Law MSS 63/C/5, quoted in Charles Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland (Oxford 1983), p. 310.
14. Law Officers’ opinion, attachment to Maxwell to Bonham-Carter, 20 May 1916, UCDA P150/512.
15. Maxwell to Bonham-Carter, 10 June 1916, Bod, MS Asquith 37.
16. Arthur, Maxwell, pp. 271–6.
17. The petition, signed 12–15 May, runs to forty pages in MS Asquith 42.
18. ‘The Irish Times on the Easter Rising’, Owen Dudley Edwards and Fergus Pyle (eds), 1916: the Easter Rising (London 1968), Appendix I, p. 248. The later extract was quoted by Dillon in his 11 May speech in Parliament.
19. Maxwell to O’Dwyer, 6 May and 12 May 1916, O’Dwyer MSS, quoted in Jerome aan de Wiel, The Catholic Church in Ireland 1914–1918 (Dublin 2003), pp. 104–5.
20. O’Dwyer to Maxwell, 17 May 1916, quoted in David W. Miller, Church, State and Nation in Ireland 1898–1921 (Dublin 1973), p. 331.
21. John H. Whyte, ‘1916 – Revolution and Religion’, in F. X. Martin (ed.), Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising (London 1967), p. 221.
22. J. J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985 (Cambridge 1989), pp. 28–9.
23. James Stephens, The Insurrection in Dublin (Dublin 1916), p. 76.
24. F. A. McKenzie, The Irish Rebellion. What Happened and Why (London 1916), pp. 105–6.
25. Warre B. Wells, An Irish Apologia (Dublin 1917), p. 66.
26. W. B. Wells and N. Marlowe, A History of the Irish Rebellion of 1916 (Dublin 1916), pp. 203–4. Cf. the Northern Whig (1 July 1916): ‘futile attempts were made at first to represent it as a sort of street brawl’.
27. Æ to Mrs Philimore, 28 July 1916, Strathcarron MSS, Bod Dep.C.714 folder 1.
28. Grace Plunkett to Asquith, 17 May 1916, Bod, MS Asquith 37.
29. Lee, Ireland, p. 32, proposes the ‘crystallisation’ idea, though he admits that the nature of the evidence prevents precise measurement of the process.
30. There is a pioneering study of press reactions in the Appendices of Edwards and Pyle (eds), 1916: the Easter Rising, pp. 251–71. As they point out, the Irish Times was read by many people who detested its political line. Lee, Ireland, pp. 32–6, adds a further well-chosen sample of the provincial newspapers.
31. RIC Monthly Confidential Reports, July 1916, CO 904 100.
32. Cabinet Confidential Print No. 1, August 1916, Bod Dep.C.714 folder 1.
33. Maxwell to Duke, 21 September 1916, WO 35 69/6.
34. Midland Reporter, 14 September 1916, PRO WO 35 69/6.
35. RIC Monthly Confidential Reports, June 1916, PRO CO 904 100.
36. Confidential Print No. 3, August 1916, Bod Dep.C.714 folder 1.
37. Memoir by P. J. Matthews, NLI Ms 9873. (Matthews did think that ‘a feeling of bitter hostility’ changed ‘overnight to one of passive admiration’.)
38. MacBride’s violence to Maud Gonne during their marriage was widely known. ‘It must have been some humourist who got him the post of water bailiff to the corporation’, Lily added, referring to his still better-known partiality to drink. R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats, vol. 2 (Oxford 2003), pp. 46–50.
39. Miller, Church, State and Nation, p. 341.
40. An ‘intention’ (as T. P. O’Connor explained to Lloyd George when he told him of this) means a wish of a religious character. O’Connor to Lloyd George, 13 June 1916, HLRO D/14/2/35.
41. HC Deb., 25 May 1916, cols. 2309–10.
42. As George Boyce says, ‘if this ambiguous phrase meant anything, it was simply a promise that there would be no automatic inclusion’ – in other words there would be further negotiations after the war. ‘British Opinion, Ireland and the War, 1916–1918’, Historical Journal 17 (3) (1974), p. 580.
43. ‘Ireland 1916’, memorandum by R. C., 26 June 1916, CAB 37/150.
44. According to William O’Brien’s note of a meeting with Carson and Lloyd George on 30 May, the latter suggested (perhaps for Carson’s benefit) that ‘In six months the war will be lost’, and ‘clung obstinately to his view that something must be done before the American elections or Wilson would be returned and the war lost’, William O’Brien, The Irish Revolution and How it Came About (London 1923), pp. 273–4.
45. H. J. Whigham, 5 May 1916, FO 395/6, quoted in Stephen Hartley, The Irish Question as a Problem in British Foreign Policy, 1914–18 (London 1987), pp. 62–3.
46. William M. Leary, jr., ‘Woodrow Wilson, Irish Americans, and the Election of 1916’, Journal of American History, 54 (1) (1967), p. 59.
47. Spring Rice to Grey, 16 June 1916, in Stephen Gwynn (ed.), The Letters and Friendships of Sir Cecil Spring Rice (Boston 1929), vol. 2, p. 338; Roosevelt to Lee, 7 June 1916, in Elting E. Morison (ed.), The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, MA, 1951), vol. 8, p. 1054.
48. Alan J. Ward, Ireland and Anglo-American Relations, 1899–1921 (London 1969), p. 113. Cf. the assessments from MI1 on Irish agitation in the USA, January–July 1916, CO 616/63.
49. Conor Gearty, ‘The Casement Treason Trial in its Legal Context’, lecture at the Royal Irish Academy Symposium, ‘Roger Casement in Irish and World History’, 6 May 2000.
50. Herbert Samuel to his wife, 2 August 1916, HLRO, Samuel MSS A/157/844. The convoluted governmental discussion of the Casement case – in which Samuel’s role was ‘not impressive’ – is carefully analysed in Bernard Wasserstein, Herbert Samuel. A Political Life (Oxford 1992), pp. 182–5.
51. Owen Dudley Edwards, ‘American Aspects of the Rising’, in Dudley Edwards and Pyle (eds), 1916: the Easter Rising, pp. 164–9.
52. Roy Jenkins, Asquith (London 1964), p. 404. In fact, there were at least five discussions. Ward, Ireland and Anglo-American Relations, pp. 120–4.
53. George Boyce, The Sure Confusing Drum: Ireland and the First World War (Swansea 1993), p. 12.
54. Keith Jeffery, Ireland and the Great War (Cambridge 2000), pp. 57–9.
55. J. B. Lyons, The Enigma of Tom Kettle (Dublin 1983), p. 293. There is a lucid exploration of his ideas in Senia Paseta, ‘Thomas Kettle: “An Irish Soldier in the Army of Europe”?’ in A. Gregory and S. Paseta (eds), Ireland and the Great War (Manchester 2002), pp. 8–27.
56. Irish Weekly Independent, 24 June 1916, quoted in Miller, Church, State and Nation, pp. 337–9.
57. R. M. Henry, The Evolution of Sinn Fein (Dublin 1920), p. 225.
58. Mary MacSwiney to Peter MacSwiney, n.d., Devoy’s Post Bag, II, p. 493.
59. McCartan to McGarrity, 13 May, 11 May 1916, in F. X. Martin (ed.), ‘The McCartan Documents, 1916’, Clogher Record (1966), pp. 26, 22.
60. Confidential Print No. 1, August 1916. Bod Dep.C.714 folder 1.
61. INAA and IVDF collections, RIC Reports, July 1916, CO 904 100. Michael Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland (Cambridge 1999), pp. 64–8, provides a lucid account of the funds.
62. While some, like Oscar Traynor, despatched their prison experience in a couple of sentences of their Witness Statements, Bob Holland wrote over forty pages on his time in Knutsford gaol – more than on the fighting in Easter Week.
63. BMH WS 340 (Oscar Traynor), WS 242 (Liam Tannam), WS 371 (Robert Holland).
64. M. Hopkinson (ed.), Frank Henderson’s Easter Rising (Cork 1998), p. 71.
65. Margery Forester, Michael Collins, the Lost Leader (London 1971), pp. 50–51.
66. HO 144 1456/661.
67. To Susan Killeen (undated, but probably written in late summer). T. P. Coogan, Michael Collins (London 1990), p. 50.
68. Frank Robbins, Under the Starry Plough (Dublin 1977), pp. 143–6.
69. BMH WS 163 (Patrick Rankin).
70. He advised Sankey that the committee should not sit as a whole, because ‘if three judges were sitting together it might give the Irish section almost too judicial a character for a body which does not hear evidence according to judicial procedure’. Samuel to Sankey, 8 June 1916, Sankey papers, Bod, MS Eng. hist. c.548.
71. Aliens Advizory [sic] Committee minute book, Sankey papers, loc. cit.
72. HO 144 1455/62, 257.
73. HO 45 24677.
74. ‘Most of the questions seemed to be directed to getting us to make a confession of being misled by our leaders and being sorry for what we had done.’ (Hopkinson (ed.), Frank Henderson’s Easter Rising, p. 74.
75. Robbins, Under the Starry Plough, pp. 148–9.
76. HO 144 1455/272, HO 144 1456/379.
77. Under-Secretary to Home Office, 19 July 1916, HO 144 1455/220.
78. W. J. Brennan Whitmore, With the Irish in Frongoch (Dublin 1917), pp. 25–30.
79. The nickname was a familiar label for ‘coercive’ British rulers, notably Chief Secretary W. E. Forster in the 1880s.
80. Sean O’Mahony, Frongoch: University of Revolution (Dublin 1987), p. 124.
81. J. J. O’Connell, ‘Reorganisation 1917’, NLI Ms 22114.
82. HO 144 1456/469.
83. Closing Report by Camp Commandant, HO 144 1456/615.
84. Report by E. Sebag Montefiore, 1–2 July 1916, HO 144 1455/168. Report by Sir Charles Cameron and Dr R. W. Braithwaite, December 1916, HO 144 1456/614.
85. Michael Collins to Home Secretary, 14 December 1916, HO 144 1456/598.
86. BMH WS 242 (Liam Tannam).
87. ‘Official Report of the Ill-Treatment of the Irish Prisoners of War Interned at Frongoch Internment Camp’, 14 November 1916, BMH CD 250/3/1.
88. Gerald Boland’s reminiscences, quoted in David Fitzpatrick, Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution (Cork 2003), pp. 58, 347.
89. BMH WS 398 (Brigid Martin).
90. HC Deb., 18 October 1916, cols. 581–93.
1. ‘State of Ireland’, Cabinet memorandum by W. H. Long, 21 July 1916, CAB 37 152/15.
2. Wimborne to Duke, 16 September 1916, Bod Dep.C.714 folder 1.
3. HC Deb., 18 October 1916, cols. 597–604.
4. J. F. Boyle, The Irish Rebellion of 1916 (London 1916), pp. 258–9.
5. Note by Archbishop of Dublin, 18 July 1916, BL Add Ms 52782, f. 89.
6. Chalmers to Bonham-Carter, 7 June 1916, Bod MS Asquith 27.
7. Louis Treguiz, L’Irlande dans la Crise Universelle (Paris 1917), ch. 2 (‘La régime provisoire: Retour aux anciennes méthodes’).
8. Note of meeting between Chief Secretary and a Southern Unionist delegation, 17 November 1916, Midleton MSS, PRO 30/67/31.
9. Redmond to Asquith, 30 November 1916, Bod, MS Asquith 37.
10. RIC Monthly Confidential Reports, January 1917, CO 904 102. Duke himself gave the War Cabinet a pessimistic report of the energetic Sinn Féin rebuilding on 19 February, WC 73, CAB 23/1.
11. Seán O Luing, I Die in a Good Cause. A Study of Thomas Ashe, Idealist and Revolutionary (Tralee 1970), p. 121.
12. There is a vividly detailed account of the Lewes experience in David Fitzpatrick, Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution (Cork 2003), pp. 59–88.
13. DRR cases, WO 35 95.
14. War Cabinet, 22 March 1917, CAB 32/2; The Times, 17 May 1917, quoted in R. B. McDowell, The Irish Convention 1917–18 (London 1970), p. 76.
15. Sir John O’Connell, ‘What Ireland Wants’, Fortnightly Review, July 1917, p. 106.
16. ‘The Military Situation in Ireland’, Cabinet Memorandum by Secretary of State for War, 21 July 1917, Cabinet paper G.T. 1477, Bod Dep.C.715.
17. War Cabinet 175, 4 July 1917, Bod Dep.C.717.
18. Fitzpatrick, Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution, p. 89.
19. Report by GOC-in-C Ireland, 25 June 1917, Bod Dep.C.715.
20. David W. Miller, Church, State and Nation in Ireland 1898–1921 (Dublin 1973), p. 393.
21. ‘Sinn Fein meetings in 1917’, CO 904 23/3.
22. DMP Report, 13 July 1917, Bod Dep.C.715.
23. RIC Reports, CO 904 104.
24. BMH WS 1093 (Thomas Treacy).
25. Fitzpatrick, Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution, pp. 98–9.
26. RIC Confidential Reports, June 1917, CO 904 103.
27. C. M. Byrne memoir, NLI Ms 21142.
28. Wimborne to Duke, 14 July 1917, Bod Dep.C.715.
29. ‘The Sinn Fein Movement in Ireland’, Cabinet memorandum by H. E. Duke, 10 July 1917, G.T. 1359, Bod Dep.C.717. Duke had to explain to his colleagues in this context that a hurley was not simply a sporting accessory but ‘a somewhat formidable weapon’.
30. See the analysis in Ben Novick, Conceiving Revolution. Irish Nationalist Propaganda during the First World War (Dublin 2001), pp. 236–9.
31. C.-in-C. Irish Command to Chief Secretary for Ireland, 5 October 1917, WO 32 9515.
32. War Cabinet 249, 15 October 1917, Bod Dep.C.715.
33. C.-in-C. to CSI, 5 October 1917, WO 32 9515.
34. Margaret Ward, ‘The League of Women Delegates and Sinn Féin’, History Ireland (Autumn 1996), pp. 40–41.
35. Michael Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland (Cambridge 1999), p. 119. NacNeill won 888 votes, 205 more than Cathal Brugha. Third and fourth were Richard Hayes (674) and Seán Milroy (667), followed by Markievicz (617), Count Plunkett (598) and Piaras Béaslaí (557), Michael Collins polled only 340 votes. CO 904 23.
36. Keith Jeffery, Ireland and the Great War (Cambridge 2000), p. 61.
37. ‘Condition of Ireland’, Cabinet memorandum by Chief Secretary for Ireland, 6 October 1917, G. T. 2227, Bod Dep.C.715.
38. Chief Secretary to Under-Secretary, 14 July 1917, WO 32 9515. A taste of these instructions may be had from the fourth, which reads ‘Isolated acts of wearing the “rebel” uniform are not regarded in the same light as the wearing of uniform in connection with drilling or marching. The latter offence is, however, aggravated by this incident where it occurs.’ For a mild military protest against the confused and ‘anomalous’ legal situation, see C.-in-C. Home Forces to Secretary of State for War, 14 October 1917, WO 32 9515.
39. Inspector General RIC to Under Secretary, 14 December 1916, WO 35 69/9.
40. D. G. Boyce and C. Hazlehurst, ‘The Unknown Chief Secretary’, Irish Historical Studies, 20 (79) (1977), p. 300, refuting the verdicts of Lyons and Fitzpatrick.
41. GOC Ireland to C.-in-C. Home Forces, 14 October 1917, WO 32 9515.
42. O’Connor to Duke, 22 January 1917, Bod Dep. C.714 folder 2.
43. C.-in-C. Ireland to Chief Secretary, 5 October 1917. Bod Dep.C.717.
44. War Cabinet 262, 1 November 1917, Bod Dep.C.717.
45. Memorandum by Lord Milner, 23 January, and Memorandum by H. E. Duke, 30 January 1917, HLRO, Lloyd George MSS F/14/4/18, F/37/4/8. Alan J. Ward, ‘Lloyd George and the 1918 Irish Conscription Crisis’, Historical Journal, 17 (1) (1974), pp. 108–9.
46. Ibid., pp. 110, 125.
47. War Cabinet, 28 March 1917, CAB 23/5/377.
48. ‘Condition of Ireland’, Cabinet memorandum by Chief Secretary for Ireland, 3 March 1918, G.T. 3798, Bod Dep.C.717.
49. Miller, Church, State and Nation in Ireland, pp. 404–5.
50. Inspector General RIC, Weekly Report, ‘Public Feeling in Ireland’, 20 April 1918, CAB 24 49/4326.
51. Ward, ‘Irish Conscription Crisis’, p. 128.
52. Richard Mulcahy, ‘Conscription and the General Headquarters Staff’, Capuchin Annual (1968), p. 384.
53. Fergus Campbell, ‘The Social Dynamics of Nationalist Politics in the West of Ireland 1898–1918’, Past and Present, 182 (2004), pp. 182–3.
54. RIC Reports, County Inspector, Galway East Riding, February 1918, CO 904 105.
55. Military Intelligence report, Midland and Connaught Division, March 1918, CO 904 157; Chief Secretary’s Office Intelligence Notes, 1918, p. 14, CO 903 19/4.
56. Ernie O’Malley, On Another Man’s Wound (London and Dublin 1936, 1979), p. 79.
57. Charles Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland (Oxford 1983), pp. 313–21.
58. Yeats to Haldane, 10 October 1918, quoted in R. F. Foster, ‘Yeats at War’, in The Irish Story (London 2001), pp. 70–71.
59. Irish Times, 30 December 1918, quoted in Paul Bew, ‘Moderate Nationalism and the Irish Revolution, 1916–1923’, Historical Journal, 42 (3) (1999), p. 736.
1. Gregory to Yeats, 7 May, and Yeats to Gregory, 11 May 1916. R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats. A Life (Oxford 2003), vol. 2, pp. 47–8, 51.
2. Gonne to Yeats, 8 November 1916, in ibid., p. 63. She said, justly enough, that the poem would be ‘unintelligible to many’, adding that ‘even Iseult’ (her daughter, to whom Yeats would shortly propose) had not understood it.
3. Edna Longley, ‘The Rising, the Somme and Irish Memory’, in M. Ní Dhonnchadha and T. Dorgan (eds), Revising the Rising (Derry 1991), pp. 46–7.
4. Desmond Ryan, The Rising. The Complete Story of Easter Week (Dublin 1949).
5. Francis MacManus, ‘Imaginative Literature and the Revolution’, in T. D. Williams (ed.), The Irish Struggle 1916–1926 (London 1966), p. 23.
6. See, e.g., Charles Townshend, ‘The Irish Republican Army and the Development of Guerrilla Warfare, 1916–21’, English Historical Review, 94 (1979), pp. 318–45.
7. F. X. Martin, ‘1916 – Myth, Fact and Mystery’, Studia Hibernica, 7 (1967), p. 20.
8. E.g. F. X. Martin (ed.), Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising: Dublin 1916 (London 1967).
9. Richard English, Armed Struggle: a History of the IRA (London 2003), pp. 76–7.
10. Garret FitzGerald, ‘The Significance of 1916’, Studies, 55 (Spring 1966), pp. 29–37.
11. Francis Shaw, ‘The Canon of Irish History – A Challenge’, Studies, 61 (Summer 1972), p. 124.
12. Conor Cruise O’Brien, ‘The Embers of Easter’, in Owen Dudley Edwards and Fergus Pyle (eds), 1916: the Easter Rising (London 1969), pp. 226–7.
13. Kevin Myers, ‘The Glory that was Hijacked’, Guardian, 30 March 1991.
14. David McKittrick, ‘Rebels of 1916 Leave Mixed Legacy’, Independent, 12 March 1991.
15. B. Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism and Historical Scholarship in Modern Ireland’, Irish Historical Studies, 26 (1988–9), pp. 329–51; D. Fennell, The Revision of Irish Nationalism (Dublin 1989).
16. Seamus Deane, ‘Wherever Green is Read’, in N Dhonnchadha and Dorgan (eds), Revising the Rising, pp. 91ff.
17. Ruth Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse. The Triumph of Failure (London 1977).
18. See, e.g., C. Desmond Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly (London 1972); and Austen Morgan, James Connolly. A Political Biography (Manchester 1988).
19. In the substantial collection of essays edited by Ciaran Brady as Interpreting Irish History. The Debate on Historical Revisionism 1938–1994 (Dublin 1994), there are just two references to 1916.
20. David Fitzpatrick, ‘Militarism in Ireland, 1900–1922’, in T. Bartlett and K. Jeffery (eds), A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge 1996), p. 394.
21. Charles Townshend, ‘The Meaning of Irish Freedom: Constitutionalism in the Free State’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, vol. 8 (1998), pp. 56–9.
22. Garret FitzGerald, Reflections on the Irish State (Dublin 2003), pp. 1–16.
23. Declan Kiberd, ‘1916: the Idea and the Action’, in K. Devine (ed.), Modern Irish Writers and the Wars (Gerrards Cross 1999), p. 29.
24. R. V. Comerford, Ireland (London 2003), p. 263.
25. See, e.g., Report of Sinn Fein Concert and Lecture, Nenagh, 9 July 1917, Bod Dep.C.715, f. 21. See also Eimear Whitfield, ‘Another Martyr for Old Ireland: the Balladry of Revolution’, in D. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Revolution? Ireland 1917–1923 (Dublin 1990), pp. 60–68.
26. NLI Ms 22114.
27. Fergus Campbell, ‘The Social Dynamics of Nationalist Politics in the West of Ireland 1898–1918’, Past and Present, 182 (2004), pp. 195–7.
28. Ibid., p. 201.
29. Keith Jeffery, Ireland and the Great War (Cambridge 2000), pp. 118–25.