DUNLOP, Robert. Ireland Under the Commonwealth

DUNLOP, Robert. Ireland Under the Commonwealth. Being a selection of documents relating to the Government of Ireland from 1651 to 1659. Edited, with historical introduction and notes. Two volumes. Manchester: U.P., 1913. pp. (1) clxxvi, 282, (2) lxxviii, 471. Medium octavo. Blue cloth, titled in gilt. Previous owner’s signature and neat bookplate. Fore-edge and bottom edge untrimmed. Top edges green. A very good set. Scarce. A selection of documents drawn from a number of volumes known as the Commonwealth Records, which were discovered by the historian, John J. Prendergast in the Bermingham Tower of Dublin Castle. These were covered in dust and had not seen daylight for over a century. The author’s intention in publishing this work was to exonerate Cromwell’s policy in Ireland. Initially he was of the opinion that ‘The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland’ by Prendergast was biased and that the position taken up by Cromwell was divine retribution for the horrid and unprovoked massacre by the Irish Catholics of the English and Scottish settlers in Ireland in 1641. However the more the author sifted through the documents, the more he began to realise that apart from the religious difference between Ireland and England, the root cause of this and subsequent rebellions was England’s refusal to grant an independent legislature to the Irish people.