Introduction
part of the risk, and the result is the present volume.
The papers here included illustrate the Society’s different activities. General Sir William Butler's discourse on Cromwell was delivered as a lecture to a crowded audience in March, 1902. Mr. Mangan's essay gained the prize of £50 offered by Mr. William Gibson in 1901, and was subsequently read at a meeting of the Society. The remaining three papers, that by Mr. Wilson on Ireland under Charles IT. (which has since been supplemented by a sketch of Tyrconnell’s administration), that of Mr. Gwynn on Sarsfield, and Miss Murray's review of the period after the Treaty of Limerick, were read to meetings of the History Class in the Society’s Reading Room. In so far, therefore, as the Society can be considered as the school for the study of Irish history, which is what we principally desire to make it, these three papers are, in a sense, more representative than the other two which come to us, the one from a distinguished officer who had made his name
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