The Method in Detail
Jane Millgate · 2022
This chapter, which presents the story of the year 1689 in Ireland up to the relief of Londonderry and the Battle of Newton Butler, has a unity and shapeliness of structure, and an excitement of actual event, which make it among the most memorable in Macaulay’s second pair of volumes. Ireland was the first subject to which Macaulay turned his attention when he began work in earnest on the second two volumes of the History . In August 1849 he set off for Ireland, to visit the Record Office in Dublin, and to see for himself Kerry, Limerick, Cork, Armagh, and Londonderry. Once the Irish materials, documentary and visual, were in his head, Macaulay found it impossible to adhere to his plan and leave the actual composition until he was ready to write about the whole of William’s reign.