The purpose of the Covenant was to demonstrate the depth of the Ulster-British community’s hostility to being placed under jurisdiction of a parliament in Dublin and the resolve of the signatories to the British Parliament, to the rest of the British people and to the world.

In 1912 virtually an entire community put their signatures to the Ulster Covenant. In Ulster, 218,206 men signed the Covenant; and 228,991 women signed a parallel declaration associating themselves with the men ‘in their uncompromising opposition to the new Home Rule Bill now before parliament’.

A further 19,162 men and 5,055 women of Ulster birth signed in Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, York, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Bristol.