Introduction

In the 1885 general election the liberal party under William Gladstone were victorious in Great Britain and Charles Stewart Parnells nationalist party were convincing winners in Ireland. Parnellite candidates won every seat outside Ulster and Dublin University. At this time, all liberals spoke of their support for the maintainance of the Union in the face of calls for home rule from across the Irish sea._¹

_{Just a year later, however, Gladstone introduced his first home rule bill in the Commons to grant Ireland legislative independance. The bill was brought down by conservatives and some liberals; these groups would soon be identified as unionists and liberal unionists respectively. From this point the unionists and liberal unionists would be virtually exclusively protestant, while the nationalists would become almost entirely made up of catholics. The 1886 electoin proved a turning point in the history of Irish politics, with the system created then still in place in Ulster today.}_²

_{Liberals continuing to support the party became known as Gladstonian liberals, indicating their willingness to impliment the home rule bill. Some of these politicians in Ireland were protestant, largely Ulster presbyterians, and they would start a tradition in1886 which would continue until the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914. Also witnessed in 1886 was the emergence of some protestant nationalists standing for election where none had done so in the previous year. After the election most liberals supported the home rule cause.}_³_{Only a small number stood in Ireland, however, and few had any electoral success before the turn of the century, despite much liberal activity in areas of Ulster such as north Antrim. The small number of protestants converting to nationalism also encountered varying fortunes.}

_{The new century saw a new wave of liberal home rule movement in Ulster, and by the two elections of 1910 more candidates than ever were presented to the electorate. Seats were still proving difficult to obtain, however, with liberal unionists and unionists in many cases holding large majorities. Protestant nationalists did not have problems obtaining seats in the first decade of the century, although it should be noted that they were often planted in constituencies known as nationalist hotbeds.}

_{In this dissertation I will examine these unusual protestant election candidates in Ulster who accepted home rule ideals, and will also look at a small number of protestants from Ulster who had success in the nationalist camp outside their home province. My aim is to discover who these men where; what their experiences of being in such an curious position were; and how they came about, by looking at changing electoral conditions in Ireland from 1886 to the outbreak of world war. Crucially, I will present the arguments of many of them in an attempt to understand their particular standpoint. I will also look at the extent of wider protestant support for home rule in these years. I will deal with the issue in two main phases, although overlaps may occur. Firstly, I will look at the period from 1886 to 1899}

_Notes

_¹_{Brian Walker. Ulster Politics: The Formative Years. (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation and Institute of Irish Studies, 1989.) 213.}

_²_Ibid.

_³_{T.W. Moody and F.X. Martin eds. The Course of Irish History. 3rd edition. (Dublin: Mercier, 1994.) 289.}