In the history of Irish Protestantism in the first half of the eighteenth century, two figures in particular dominate the historical record. William King, archbishop of Dublin from 1703 to 1729, can be approached through the large archive of his personal correspondence preserved in Trinity College, Dublin. Hugh Boulter, archbishop of Armagh 1724–42, by contrast, is known to historians mainly through the collection of his correspondence published in 1769 by his secretary Ambrose Phillips. The letters printed there are a vivid record of the interaction of matters political and ecclesiastical across almost two decades. But there is inevitably a certain unease attached to exclusive reliance on a selection compiled and edited by a servant and admirer. It might have been expected that a modern scholarly edition would go back to the original manuscripts still held in Christ Church, Oxford, in order to comment on Phillips's editorial procedures and the status of the text that he produced. McNally and Milne, however, have instead chosen to reprint Phillips's text as it stands, along with a handful of additional letters taken mainly from the State Papers. More extraordinary still, they have chosen to retain Phillips's sketchy and often partisan footnotes (soon after the last of many attacks on Boulter, we are told, Jonathan Swift ‘became one of his own mere doting Struldbrugs’ [p. 450]), while adding nothing of their own that might help the modern reader make sense of the many allusions to contemporary events and personalities. The Boulter who emerges from their text is thus the one already well established in the literature. He was a highly political prelate. Appointed to Armagh from England at the height of the controversy over Wood's Halfpence, he systematically used his influence, both in the Church and in the Irish House of Lords, to uphold what he called the English interest in the face of the insubordination of Irish Protestant ‘natives’. At the same time he was also a conscientious ecclesiastical administrator and a generous contributor to poor relief and to projects for social improvement. Even when reiterating the need for politically reliable appointments within the Church, he consistently sought to ensure that those preferred were also pastorally sound. Odd editorial choices apart, the book is produced to Four Courts Press's usual impeccable standards. Milne contributes a workmanlike biographical sketch, filling in details of Boulter's early life. McNally contributes a lively essay on the political world revealed in the letters, noting the evidence that Boulter, for all his dogged adherence to English interests, was at times slighted by his political masters, and that he ended his career wrapped in ‘a melancholic and weary pessimism’ (p. 95).