As always, with the proviso that this info (top paragraph) was from wikipedia:
"Faced with what seemed to be imminent civil war, King George, a strong hibernophile since his days as a Naval officer based in Cork, intervened to stop what be believed was the slide to civil war and took the unprecedented step of inviting the leaders of both communities, along with the British government, to the Palace for a conference. The conference assembled in Buckingham Palace in late July 1914. Though the issue of home rule had been on the political agenda since the 1870s, the 1914 conference was the first time that a formal peace conference had been called involving both Nationalists and Unionists. Among those who attended were Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond, his deputy, John Dillon and the Leaders of Irish Unionism, Edward Carson and the Earl of Midleton. The conference broke up after three days without agreement. All sides however argued that it had been a useful exercise, with Unionists and Nationalists for the first time having meaningful discussions on how to allay each other's fears about the other. The conference was overtaken by developments in Europe. King George himself intervened on a number of subsequent occasions on Ireland. In 1920 he made clear his opposition to the behaviour of the Black and Tans paramilitary force being used by the British Government during the Irish War of Independence, while unsuccessfully intervening to try to save the life of hunger striker Terence MacSwiney. In 1921 he made a passionate appeal for reconciliation in Ireland at the opening of the Parliament of Northern Ireland which led directly to a truce between the Irish Republic and the United Kingdom, paving the way for the Anglo-Irish Treaty. In 1932 he defused a row between the President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State Éamon de Valera and the Governor-General of the Irish Free State James McNeill by getting de Valera to withdraw a request for McNeill's dismissal, and then getting the McNeill to take early retirement."
Shane Leslie (son of Prince Arthur's friend Leonie Leslie and first cousin to Winston Churchill), the Irish diplomat and Home Rule nationalist, has several papers on the conference, including letters from James William Lowther, 1st Viscount of Ullswater, regarding the Buckingham Palace Conference of July 1914. Includes 3 pages of autograph notes about the conference by Shane Leslie, and 18 pages of autograph transcriptions by Sir Shane of correspondence regarding the conference. Also includes "Secret" report (printed by the Foreign Office July 22, 1914) about the conference: "The Irish National Party have all along been, and still are, strongly of the opinion that no satisfactory settlement of the Irish question can be obtained by the exclusion of any portion of Ireland from the operation of the Home Rule Bill." Leslie was also a primary witness to much that was said and done outside the official record during the negotiation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.
