There is no doubting the significance of the law in the expansion and solidification of English authority in seventeenth-century Ireland. As Paul Smith observes in the introduction to this well-researched and considered volume, ‘[f]or the English and Protestant interest in Ireland, the law was the principal means for enforcing the mandate of the administration, apart from military intervention’ (p. 1). Of course, with the rise of English and Protestant interests came a decline in Catholic fortunes, and it is Catholic engagement with and experience of the law in Restoration Ireland that Smith seeks to excavate and explore.
In Ireland, the years that followed Charles II’s restoration to the throne were highly consequential, but Restoration Ireland remained curiously understudied for many years. In recent decades, however, there have been some significant interventions, which have largely focused on the land settlement, and on the statutory process and financial settlement that underpinned it. As Smith observes, however, very little meaningful attention has been paid to the law. The field of legal history remains ‘underdeveloped’ in Ireland and historians, when they ‘do engage with the law … the scope has been narrow and the results of limited application’ (pp. 4-5).
Smith recognises the folly of minimising the law in any consideration of seventeenth century Ireland, noting that it ‘was a primary tool of conquest’, particularly as the means through which ‘the land settlements … were articulated and implemented’ (p. 5). Indeed, as Smith observes, ‘[a]part from military force, the imposition of common law was the most powerful instrument of the English administration in the conquest and control of Ireland’ (p. 20). For Catholics, on the other hand, the law had ‘several distinct meanings’ and their encounters with and responses to it were plural. The law could be understood as ‘alien and oppressive’ but it also offered some Catholics the chance to reclaim lost estates. It also acted as a bulwark against ‘arbitrary and unjust administration’ and regulated economic and familial relationships (p. 1).
Smith has a complex knot to untangle, but he takes a largely effective approach to the topic. Through a series of case studies, this book explores the relationship of Catholics to a legal system that was essentially hostile to their interests. Smith is considered in his approach, making intelligent use of a diverse range of source material to draw out the plurality of Catholic perspectives and experience. In Chapter 1, Smith analyses the letters of Oliver Plunkett and John Brenan to reveal the ineffectiveness of the clerics strategy—which was ‘to be watchful, to cooperate, to conciliate and to avoid provocation’ (p. 51) —in the face of English legal and political processes. In contrast to Plunkett and Brenan’s conciliatory approach, the focus of the second chapter is on four members of the Catholic hierarchy who challenged English encroachments – John Lynch, Nicholas French, Edmond O’Reilly and John O’Molony.
Lynch and French worked within the constitutional framework, with the former querying the legitimacy of the English parliaments, while the latter ‘was more concerned with the nature of the output of parliament, tainted by cupidity, and contrary to natural and divine law’ (p. 64). Both bishops were exiled from 1652-3, and were thus able to consider matters from a distance, over an extended period of time. O’Reilly and O’Molony, meanwhile, are described as ‘activist’ and ‘maverick’ prelates, who had ‘little time for legal analysis’ (p. 64). Their correspondence instead reflects the exigencies of a turbulent political climate and indicates ‘an interventionist and more aggressive aspect of the hierarchy in the second half of the seventeenth century’ (p. 65).
Smith’s analysis here is illuminating but the assertion that ‘neither ethnic background, nor place of formation nor political histories defined the approach of these clerics to the law’ requires some qualification. Firstly, because (as Smith acknowledges) the sources for O’Reilly and O’Molony are lacking; and secondly, because he instead attributes their approaches to individual personalities and circumstances, and the tenor of the times—factors that can hardly be decoupled from ethnic background and formation. While Brenan did not appear to be directed by wider Gaelic attitudes to the English colonial project, there is no reason O’Reilly and O’Molony could not have been. While O’Reilly’s instinct for self-preservation may have led to a ‘dalliance’ with the Cromwellians in 1653 (p. 80), both men ‘valued loyalty to Ireland over the Stuarts’ (p. 83) and this undoubtedly shaped their attitude to the constitutional settlement.
The formative force of Gaelic identity is considered in Chapter 3. Smith shifts focus from the Catholic hierarchy to the work of Irish language writers, to examine the ‘mentalité of Gaelic Catholic Ireland in relation to the law’ in the mid-seventeenth century. Smith wisely cautions against drawing conclusions from this ‘heterogenous and relatively small cohort’, but this chapter provides an essential perspective because these writers were sites where the ‘national and personal catastrophes of the era coincided’ (p. 99). The chapter’s main focus is on Ó Bruadair, ‘who towers over the rest like a Biblical prophet’ (p. 100) and whose work—from the late 1660s—dealt increasingly with the intersection between law and politics. His outrage over the Restoration land settlement led him to direct his ire toward the Duke of Ormond, in poems like A Dhia na n-Uile.
The fourth chapter sees Smith switch focus from the cultural expression of Catholic frustration over the land settlement, to the practical reality of protecting or vindicating rights to land that had been confiscated under Cromwell. Established by the Act of Settlement (1662), the 1662-63 Court of Claims was, as Smith points out, ‘the most important site of Catholic litigation between 1660 and 1690’ (p. 123). Unlike the Act of Settlement of 1652, the 1662 legislation did not extend to the wives, children, and remaindermen of forfeiting proprietors, with the result that they were the principal beneficiaries of the 500 decrees issued by the 1663 Court. Smith does not focus on these cohorts, which is something of a missed opportunity, but the selection of case studies nonetheless provides insight into the varied circumstances of individual claimants and the mechanics of a court that restored 930,000 acres to Catholic claimants before it was prematurely shut down.
The fifth chapter deals with Catholics lawyers; men who ‘accepted the legal system with all the challenges and imperfections it posed for Catholics, and chose to exploit the opportunities which the law offered for financial gain, recovery of estates and political advancements’ (p. 164). Smith traces the careers of John Walshe, William Talbot and Gerald Dillon. Walshe and Dillon were educated at the London Inns and were men of acknowledged ability, while Talbot was reliant on his family’s status rather than ‘his wits for progression’ (p. 192). All three, however, were reliant on ‘family connections, networks and patronage’ to succeed. While Talbot was almost entirely reliant on his family for business, however, Walshe and Dillon cultivated highly successful private and public practices, with both men working for and collaborating with Protestants, as circumstances dictated. Their careers demonstrate how Catholics could ‘survive, and even thrive’ in Restoration Ireland but, in the end, it was their religion that did for them, as political events took over and their networks of Protestant clients disappeared. As Smith concludes, ‘[t]he rise and fall of James II proved their undoing, as it did for all of Catholic Ireland’ (p. 195).
Overall, Smith’s approach provides significant insight into Catholic attitudes to the law in Restoration Ireland. The use of case studies allows Smith to interrogate a variety of perspectives; it allows us to encounter individual personalities as they grappled with constitutional and legislative earthquakes in the 1650s and sought to survive a series of aftershocks following the Restoration. If there is a quibble, it is with the use of endnotes in each chapter, particularly because Smith is wont to supply significant additional information in the notes. That small complaint aside, this is a highly valuable addition to the field and essential reading for anyone with an interest in Restoration Ireland.
