History Glossary

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Collins, Michael
born in 1890 in County Cork, he worked in the Post Office in London and joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He fought in the 1916 rising, was elected an MP, became organiser of the ‘Squad’ which murdered British suspects, and was one of those who signed the Treaty in London in 1921. He was in command of the Free State army when he was killed in action in August 1922.

Company
in the British Army.

Connolly, James
born in Edinburgh in 1868, he came to live in Ireland in 1896 as a socialist organiser. Self educated, he was a very talented journalist and a trade union organiser. A revolutionary socialist republican, he led the Irish Citizen Army to join in the 1916 rising. He was executed (because wounded) strapped to a chair.

Cosgrave, William T.
elected a Sinn Féin councillor to Dublin Corporation in 1909, he fought in the Easter Rising and sat in the first Dáil. He supported the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty and became premier of the Irish Free State during the Civil War. He ruled until de Valera won a general election in 1932. He died in 1965.

Council of Ireland
the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, which set up Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland (a year later the Irish Free State) included a council of 20 northern and 20 southern representatives to discuss matters of common interest. It never met, not even when it reappeared in the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement.

Covenant
an agreement or promise made to God, originally made by the Hebrews. The Solemn League and Covenant, signed on 28th September 1912, was a pledge to use ‘all means’ to stop the setting up of a parliament in Ireland under the terms of the 3rd Home Rule Bill.

Craig, Captain James
born in 1871 the seventh child of a millionaire whiskey distiller in Belfast, he was elected Unionist MP for Co. Down in 1906. He masterminded the great displays of Unionist solidarity 1910-14 and became Northern Ireland’s first Prime Minister in 1921. Knighted in 1917 and made Lord Craigavon in 1927, he died in office in 1940.

Curragh Mutiny
in March 1914 Brigadier General Hubert Gough led 60 British cavalry officers to resign their posts in the Army. This was because they thought they would have to fight Ulster Unionists. The War Office refused to accept the resignations.