This volume is the outgrowth of an investigation begun in the year 1897, and carried on at intervals to the present time. While the movement of the English and Welsh Quakers to Pennsylvania has been treated to some extent by historians, that of the Irish Quakers has been overlooked, and it was with the hope of filling, in a measure, this deficiency that the present work was undertaken.

It has been my endeavor to give a plain, orderly presentation of the facts, without embellishment; and I have deemed it of greater interest to let the contemporary records, as much as possible, tell their own story. The inequality of treatment in portions of the book is due partly to variation in the materials; at one point they are abundant and at another scanty. In Part I., I have attempted only an outline of the early history of the Quakers in Ireland; the full history is yet to be written. An abundance of material for such a study lies buried in the manuscript records of the Society in Ireland, and it is to be hoped that some one will be sufficiently interested to prepare a thorough and systematic treatise upon the subject.