This book of seven chapters has an unusually short introduction by Jane Fenlon of four pages only, one of them a very terse summary of its contents. Something far more ambitious was needed to pull the somewhat disparate contributions into a coherent whole. The introduction states that most of its chapters ‘have an art-historical focus that examine aspects of patronage, by both magnates and merchants, in architecture, sculpture and the decorative arts’ (p. 13). Fenlon also states that the essays in the book ‘strive to present both new information and new insights into previously examined sources in an effort to paint a clearer picture of the development of Kilkenny town and its mercantile class in the early modern period’ (p. 14). However, many of the chapters do not match these descriptions precisely. For example, the first chapter, by Linda Doran, is focused on the development of New Ross in County Wexford in the thirteenth century. Oliver Harris opens his chapter on the Carew and Lumley ancestral monuments and memorial displays in England with the disclaimer that ‘this essay is not directly concerned with Kilkenny or the Ormonds’ (p. 144). It is well-written and it is well-illustrated with photos of monuments to the Carews in Devon and Warwickshire and to the Lumleys in Durham, Surrey and Sussex but it is perhaps out of place in the current volume.

Julian Munby does a very fine job in presenting ‘new information and new insights into previously examined sources’ with his chapter based on ‘new work on the Liber primus of Kilkenny’ (p. 31). He shows what can be learned about urban communities, including their governance and economy, from an expert re-examination of historical records which have been catalogued and edited long ago and yet remain under-utilised by historians. This would have made an excellent opening chapter for this book on Kilkenny. David Edwards presents a highly original and very interesting chapter on some of the townsmen of Kilkenny who acted as counsellors, managers, schemers and spymasters to the earls of Ormond. It helps us to understand better how the earls exercised lordship effectively through servants and subordinates, even in the very unpredictable and unsettled conditions that prevailed in Tudor Ireland. Danielle O'Donovan's chapter explores how Piers Butler (c.1467–1539) and his wife Margaret FitzGerald (1472–1542) used architecture and sculpture to augment the sphere of influence they built up through an affinity comprised of feudal allies and capable servants. O'Donovan builds on the pioneering work of Edwin Rae on tomb sculpture in late medieval Kilkenny and Tipperary created by the O'Tunney workshops. But she goes further by highlighting how the tomb sculptures relate closely to large-scale contemporary architectural works sponsored by members of Kilkenny's urban elites, the local gentry and also some Gaelic lords, such as the leading FitzPatricks as they strove to be recognised as nobility. Those major monetary investments were made to reflect the high status of their patrons and, no less importantly in those unsettled times, the political affinity to which they belonged. O'Donovan helpfully cross-references her chapter with Edwards's.

Jane Fenlon's chapter on the houses and wealth of Kilkenny's merchant elite in the sixteenth century is a tour de force. Fenlon's focus is on showing how the increased prosperity of Kilkenny in the sixteenth century was expressed in the architecture commissioned by members of its mercantile families. In addition, she considers their trade links, connections with the earls of Ormond, the English royal court and other trading centres, and how the merchants chose to dispose of their wealth after death. She reveals in striking detail a prosperous, outward-looking urban elite that was aware of current developments in architecture and invested in remarkable buildings that formed the most impressive townscape in early modern Ireland. The book finishes with a short chapter by Bríd McGrath on the Kilkenny merchants and the 1613–15 parliament. It draws attention to a series of royal charters acquired by Kilkenny and neighbouring towns in the early years of the seventeenth century that held the promise of greater civic liberties and economic growth. However, the increasingly strident insistence of the crown and its colonial regime in Dublin that everyone conform to the Church of Ireland began to augur ill for the future.