ABSTRACT
The Ulster Covenant, modelled on the Scottish Covenant of 1557, was drawn up in 1912 and signed by almost three-quarters of Ulster’s Protestants over the age of fifteen. They pledged themselves to use ‘all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland’, given that the 1911 Parliament Act meant that Home Rule was due to become law in 1914. In practice this meant the creation (in January 1913) of the Ulster Volunteer Force (comprising 100,000 covenanters) and preparations for an ‘Ulster provisional government’ to assume control of the province in the event of Home Rule passing.
