This well-researched and illuminating book asks its readers to reimagine how the events of 1688–1691 shaped Irish history. Call it what you will—the Glorious Revolution, the Williamite War, or Cogadh an Dá Rí—the struggle between James II and William of Orange in Ireland casts its shadow over everything that came after. James II and his supporters were defeated and William of Orange and his adherents victorious, in turn setting the stage for a century of Protestant, colonial dominance and Catholic marginalization. Little wonder that the Boyne remains at the center of Protestant commemoration, and the refusal to honor the terms of the Treaty of Limerick has remained a centerpiece of a Catholic, nationalist narrative of grievance. For all the obvious differences of interpretation, both of these narratives share an emphasis on the importance of the Williamite War in the shaping of eighteenth-century Ireland and, in turn, what followed after. The crushing of Catholic resistance and the copperfastening of Protestant ascendancy via the penal laws were the direct results of James's defeat and William's victory. Professional historians have eschewed the polemical tone and the cruder simplifications of these competing narratives, but they too have agreed that the Boyne and Limerick mark the end of one era in Irish history and the beginning of another. A text on seventeenth century Ireland is likely to end at the Boyne; one on the eighteenth century is likely to begin there.

As the dates in Kinsella's title make clear, he has avoided those handy chronological clichés in favor of a more complex account of the transition from the (relatively) Catholic-friendly era of the Stuarts to the more rigidly Protestant eighteenth century. He does so by following the career of Colonel John Browne, a character who would appear to be one of the great exceptions to the rules of Irish history. He belonged to what Kinsella calls “the New Interest,” a group of Catholics who profited from the dispossession of other Catholics, building fortunes and estates speculating in land. For them, James II was no Catholic savior but rather a threat to their own fortunes: if the land transfers of the seventeenth century were reversed, the “New Interest” men would suffer along with Protestant owners. Browne nevertheless supported the Jacobites, but as the war wound down, he was an active proponent of a negotiated surrender. He was no prospective Wild Goose, nor did he intend to stake his future on helping James II or his family reclaim the throne. Instead he managed to have inserted into the Articles of Limerick which ended the fighting a clause promising that his debts would be repaid by a special levy on the estates of his fellow Catholic landowners. We have here what would seem to be an exceptional character indeed: a Catholic who made his fortune speculating in the lands of his coreligionists, had little love for James II, and looked on the end of the Williamite war as an opportunity to improve his financial fortunes. Kinsella both underlines Browne's exceptional status and questions it, using him as a case study for the fortunes of “New Interest” Catholic landowners and of Catholics who chose accommodation to the Williamite regime over exile and Jacobite resistance. What emerges is a more complex picture of the transition from Stuart to Williamite rule and a more optimistic account of Catholic fortunes following the Jacobite defeat.

Kinsella's story emerges in three parts. Part 1 is the most biographical of the three, following Browne's rise as a landowner—fueled by buying up the lands of impoverished relatives—and his own subsequent fall into heavy indebtedness—fueled by a disastrously expensive and unprofitable attempt to establish ironworks on his estates. As chapter 2 indicates, Browne put these ironworks to use in the Jacobite cause once war broke out in 1689, but he failed to be of much use and went even deeper into debt in the process. Browne emerged from the war in desperate straits and with little love for the Jacobite regime.

Part 2 abandons the biographical frame to large extent (though Browne remains a central character). Instead, the three chapters of this part examine each of the surrender agreements made between Jacobite forces and William's victorious armies. Here Kinsella makes an important contribution in noting that the Articles of Limerick were far from the only articles that shaped Catholic survival following the war: agreements made at Drogheda, Waterford, Inis Boffin, Sligo, and Galway likewise protected (to varying degrees) Catholics under the new regime.

Part 3 focuses on the history of the controversial clause Browne managed to have inserted into the Articles of Limerick, which obliged Catholic landowners to pay for his debts, largely owed to Protestants. Unsurprisingly, this was one of few clauses in the Articles of Limerick which the Protestant parliament was eager to see implemented and likewise created conflict between Browne and his fellow Catholic landowners.

In recovering the checkered career of John Browne and restoring to prominence the “New Interest” to which he belonged, Kinsella offers a worthwhile contribution to the historiography of eighteenth-century Ireland. The book is well-researched and persuasive and poses some important questions for historians of the era. One wishes at times that Kinsella had taken on those questions a bit more directly himself: it is not always clear whether Browne is interesting as an apparent or an actual exception, and whether Kinsella thinks emphasizing the New Interest can (or should) completely reorient our understanding of late Stuart Ireland and the transition from seventeenth- to eighteenth-century Ireland. That aside, this is a fine book that breaks new ground in drawing our attention to an interesting and understudied topic. Those interested in this period of Irish history will need to reckon with Kinsella's findings.