Home-rulers

People who supported Home Rule, especially the movement for Irish self-government within the United Kingdom in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The term encompassed Irish nationalists and, particularly after 1885, Liberals who supported Gladstone’s policy. Home-rulers differed over the extent of Ireland’s proposed autonomy and its constitutional relationship with Britain. The term is chiefly historical, although home rule continues to be used more generally for movements seeking self-government within a larger state.