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FROM THE ARCHIVES:The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the early 1880s, Lord Spencer, set out by rail and horseback for a tour of the south of the country at the height of the Land League campaign. This report covered his visit to Millstreet, Co Cork. – JOE JOYCE

EARL SPENCER is a man not easily driven from the path he has deliberately chosen or he would have resigned his intention to visit the birthplace and home of the Moonlighters yesterday. Millstreet is not the place of all others in this part of the world where the administrator of the Crimes Act might anticipate a cheerful welcome, and its selection as the scene of his first visit just after his arrival in the south shows as much perhaps as anything could do, the determination of the Viceroy, who has throughout so terrible a period of our history as that chronicled since the date of the [Phoenix] Park murders [in 1882], held a firm grasp of the reins of government, and calmly and courageously faced the situation with all its perils and difficulties.