Ian Paisley, founder of a self-styled Free Presbyterian Church, reminisced that Nicholson prayed that Paisley might be given a tongue as sharp as a cow’s in the service of the Gospel. Paisley if not God hearkened to that prayer, and despite the remarkable turnaround which crowned and then swiftly ended his political career in old age, he can shoulder much of the responsibility for the immobilisme of Ulster politics through three decades of violence at the end of the twentieth century.24
