Dutch influence in the urban landscape of Cork City pre-1800: Fact or myth?

The early years of the eighteenth century Irish port town, Cork saw an expansion of its city limits, an era of reconstruction both within and beyond the walls of its Medieval townscape and a reclamation of its marshlands to the east and west. New people, new ideas and the beginnings of new wealth infused the post Elizabethan character of the recently siege battered city. It also brought a desire for something different, something new, an opportunity to redefine the ambience and visual perception of the urban landscape and thereby make a statement about its intended cultural and social orientations. It brought an opportunity to re-imagine and model a new, continental style of place and surrounding environment.

The Irish House of Lords, 1780-1800: politics and ideology

This thesis covers the Irish House of Lords in the last two decades of its life. A number of important themes run through the work - the regency crisis, patronage, the management of the Lords, the relationship between the Lords and Commons. These themes, explored from different angles, are vital to an understanding of the political role of the upper house in the 1780s and 1790s. This study is confined to the Lords as a political institution and thus its judicial role as final court of appeal, which was restored to it in 1782, will not be explored here. The thesis consists of two parts. Part one examines the structure and powers of the House of Lords while part two looks at the parties and policies of the house. Chapter one discusses the British constitution as imposed upon Ireland. Chapter two suggests the reasons why constitutional changes were introduced in 1782, and looks at the contribution made by the Irish House of Lords in securing these changes. Chapter three explores the various channels of influence which the peers enjoyed. Chapter four explores the sometimes tense relationship between Lords and Commons. Chapter five examines management of the House of Lords by Dublin Castle. Part two, begins at chapter six. This chapter explores the leadership of both parties within the Lords. Chapter seven looks at how patronage was used to reward those who were loyal to the government. Chapter eight explores the influence of the Whig opposition. Chapter nine looks at the controversial attempts made by Pitt and his ministry during the 1790s to win the support of catholics and turn them from the lure of French ideas, and of the response of the peers to these attempts. Chapter ten is concerned with the relationship between the peers of the House of Lords and the lords lieutenant during the 1790s. Chapter eleven looks at the Union and the House of Lords and attempts to answer the question historians have long asked: why did the Irish parliament and the House of Lords in particular, look favourably on the proposed union of the two kingdoms and the end of their own institution? The House of Lords in the closing decades of the eighteenth century was an institution within which the wealth and power of the kingdom could be found. Its members were politically active, both inside and outside the house. It contained a majority who saw the Crown as the source of stability, but it was a living and evolving political organism and therefore it contained men who believed that the Crown should have its influence limited. This evolution is also demonstrated in its desire for political change in 1782 and 1788. Its last, and perhaps most radical decision, was to vote for its own demise in 1900.

The Queen's College, Cork: its origins and early history, 1803-1858

This work examines the origins and early history of the Queen's College, Cork. Designedly there is as much stress on the origins as on the early history, for it is the contention of the work that the College was something more than a legislative mushroom. It was very much in the tradition of the civic universities which added an exciting new dimension to academic life in these islands in the nineteenth century. The first chapter surveys university practice and thinking at the opening of the century, relying exclusively on published sources. The second chapter is devoted specifically to the state of learning in Cork during the period, and makes extensive use of hitherto unpublished manuscript material in relation to the Royal Cork Institution. The third chapter deals with the highly significant evidence on education embodied in the Report of the Select Committee on Irish Education of 1838. This material has not previously been published. In chapter four an extended study is made of relevant letters in the manuscript correspondence of Sir Robert Peel - even the most recent authoritative biography has ignored this material. The remaining three chapters are devoted more specifically to the College, both in the formulation or policy and in its practical working. In chapter six there is an extended survey of early College life based exclusively on hitherto unpublished manuscript material in the College Archives. All of these sources, together with incidental published material, are set out at the end of each chapter.