The British Government proclaimed the Dail, the Sinn Fein organisation, and later the Gaelic League as illegal bodies, but this produced no effect. Meetings were held ” in secret,” but really with the full knowledge of large numbers of persons, probably often also with that of the police, who had no desire to incur risks by a display of zeal. The lot of these men was indeed not an enviable one. In many parts of the country they hardly dared to venture abroad. It is scarcely to be wondered at that they, in some cases, turned on their opponents and savagely revenged themselves by destruction of property or even by murders.

Meanwhile, the appointed twelve months from the con¬clusion of the War had passed, and it was necessary that action should be taken in regard to the suspended Home Rule Bill. In December (1919), Mr. Lloyd George announced that he would introduce an Amending Bill to modify the Act passed in 1914. The provisions of this measure were intended to honour the engagements given to North-east Ulster that she should not be coerced, while, at the same time, the promise of Legislative Independence made to Nationalist Ireland should not be actually broken. There were now set up in Ireland two Parliaments, one for the six counties of Antrim, Down, Armagh, Derry, Tyrone, and Fermanagh; the other for the rest of the country. The powers of the two Parliaments would be restricted by regula¬tions,   reserving   certain   matters   to   the   jurisdiction   of   theWestminster Assembly, but their powers would be equal. 
 
This Bill was not really acceptable to any party. The two Nationalist groups resented the partition of Ireland, as well as the restricted powers of the proposed Parliaments. The Ascendancy in Ulster desired the maintenance of the Legislative Union But, while the latter declared that they would accept and work the scheme, the former announced their intention ot ignoring the Southern Parliament should it be established.
During the summer ^1920), there were murders, burnings, ambushes and riots all over Ireland. In Belfast, Catholic work¬men were driven out of their employment, and houses inhabited by Catholics burnt. As a result several thousand people were left homeless and destitute.

In other parts of Ulster the same thing happened, but ot course on  a much smaller  scale.     Southern Ireland replied  to this by a general boycott of Belfast-made goods.    On November 21 st two terrible occurrences  took place in Dublin.       In   the morning, fourteen British officers (said by the Sinn Fein party to have been employed in Secret Service work) were shot in the houses where they were staying.     Several men were afterwards arrested for this, and two were hanged, but the evidence against them  was   so   slender  that   it   seems  unlikely  that  either  was guilty.    In the afternoon of the same day a crowd, assembled in Croke Park on the outskirts of the city to witness a football match,   was fired on by  military,  who drove  up  in   armoured cars, and fifteen persons, including a woman and a child, were killed.    It was stated by the Irish Chief Secretary (Sir Hamar Greenwood),  when questioned on the matter in the House of Commons, that persons in the crowd had begun by firing on the soldiers,  but  no reliable  evidence of this was  ever produced, •while there was much evidence to the contrary.    Evidently the whole   country   was   falling   into   a   state   of   anarchy.   

Above : Portrait Of Henry Joy McCracken

The Insurrection broke out at three different points : in mid-Leinster, that is to say in the counties of Kildare, Carlow, Meath and to some extent in Dublin ; in the Ulster counts of Antrim and Down ; and in Wexford and Wicklow In Cork there was one encounter between a few hundred peasants and a troop of yeomanry, but the rest of Munster, and the entire province of Connaught, remained quiet.

Above : Picture Of Owen Roe O’Neill

The period of Irish History on which we are now entering is one extremely difficult to treat within narrow limits. It is, as has been well said by Carlyle, both confused and confusing. ” There ara Parties on the back of Parties, at war with the world and with each other.
There are Catholics of the Pale, demanding freedom of religion. . . . There are old Irish Catholics, under the Pope’s nuncio . . . and Owen Roe O’Neill, demanding, not religious freedom alone, but what we now call ‘ Repeal of the Union.’ Then there are Ormond Royalists of the Episcopalian and mixed creeds, strong for King without Covenant; Ulster and other Presbyterians, strong for King and Covenant ; lastly, Michael Jones and the Commonwealth of England, who want neither King nor Covenant.” In order to convey a clear idea of the course of events, it will be necessary to confine ourselves to the relation only of those which exercised important influence and modified the situation as a whole.