Irish question; Ulster (Northern Ireland and Ireland) -- Politics and government
Ulstermen living in other parts of Ireland, and in Great Britain, were
not forgotten. Arrangements were made enabling such to sign the Covenant
in Dublin, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol,
and York. Two curious details may be added, which no reader who is alive
to the picturesqueness of historical associations will deem too trivial
to be worth recording. In Edinburgh a number of Ulstermen signed the
Covenant in the old Greyfriars' Churchyard on the "Covenanters' Stone,"
the well-known memorial of the Scottish Covenant of the seventeenth
century; and the other incident was that, among some twenty men who
signed the Covenant in Belfast with their own blood, Major Crawford was
able to claim that he was following a family tradition, inasmuch as a
lineal ancestor had in the same grim fashion emphasised his adherence to
the Solemn League and Covenant in 1638.
The most careful precautions were taken to ensure that all who signed
were properly entitled to do so, by requiring evidence to be furnished
of their Ulster birth or domicile, and references able to corroborate
it. The declaration in the Covenant itself that the person signing had
not already done so was in order to make sure that none of the
signatures should be duplicates. When the lists were closed--they were
kept open for some days after Ulster Day--they were very carefully
scrutinised by a competent staff at the Old Town Hall, and it is certain
that the numbers as eventually published included no duplicate signature
and none that was not genuine. Precisely the same care was taken in the
case of the Declaration by which, in words similar to the Covenant but
without its pledge for definite action, the women of Ulster associated
themselves with the men "in their uncompromising opposition to the Home
Rule Bill now before Parliament."
It was not until the 22nd of November that the scrutiny and verification
of the signatures was completed, and the actual numbers published. They
were as follows: In Ulster itself 218,206 men had registered themselves
as Covenanters, and 228,991 women had signed the Declaration; in the
rest of Ireland and in Great Britain 19,162 men and 5,055 women had
signed. Thus, a grand total of 471,414 Ulster men and women gave their
adherence to the policy of which the Ulster Covenant was the solemn
pledge. To every one of these was given a copy of the document printed
on parchment, to be retained as a memento, and in thousands of cottages
throughout Ulster the framed Covenant hangs to-day in an honoured place,
and is the householder's most treasured possession.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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