The crisis that engulfed the three kingdoms from 1678 to 1681 evoked the spectre of Catholic tyranny and arbitrary government. Polemicists and politicians were gripped by fear as a result of the revelation of the Popish Plot, a fabricated conspiracy that claimed Jesuits would assassinate the English monarch, Charles II, as part of a wider campaign to massacre Protestants across Britain and Ireland. Matters were not helped by the fact that the next in line to the throne, James, the duke of York, was a Catholic. The threat of a Catholic monarch proved alarming to many and led to the Exclusion Crisis. From this emerged the Tory and Whig parties. The latter consisted of a broad church of those opposed to James’s succession and engaged in a concerted campaign in both the English House of Commons and contemporary print to whip up popular support for exclusion. They argued that there were eerie parallels between the alleged conspiracy uncovered between 1678 and 1681, and the events that led to the wars of the three kingdoms in the 1640s. This prompted a resurgence of interest among Irish and English audiences in the events of the 1641 rebellion and the confederate wars in Ireland. Key participants in the wars of the mid-seventeenth century publicly argued about the course and conduct of the conflict through the medium of memoirs and historical narratives published to defend their actions in both the 1640s and during the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis. As James Butler, the first duke of Ormond, was lord lieutenant and the most prominent supporter of the Stuarts in Ireland, his behaviour in the 1640s, when he had acted as the king’s lead negotiator with the confederates causing concern to many of his fellow Protestants in Ireland and supporters of the English parliament, was intensely scrutinised and critiqued by his Whig opponents.Footnote ¹ As a result, in the early 1680s Ormond became embroiled in a bitter dispute involving Arthur Annesley, the earl of Anglesey, and James Tuchet, the earl of Castlehaven, over their actions during the civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century. Where Ormond had emerged from the 1640s with a reputation as a sturdy royalist, Annesley had acted in Ireland on behalf of the English parliament, while Castlehaven had been a leading military figure among the confederate Catholics.Footnote ²

What made this particularly problematic was the fact that history was utilised as a vehicle through which the present could be explained by explicit comparisons.Footnote ³ Thus, in 1680, when Anglesey accused Ormond of gross disloyalty toward Irish and English Protestants in the 1640s, he hoped to pave the way for Ormond’s removal from his current position as lord lieutenant on the basis of a betrayal of the Protestant interest in Ireland, as ‘a sort of impeachment by pamphlet’.Footnote ⁴ Alan Ford has shown that biographies of leading Church of Ireland clergymen published during this crisis attempted to influence English ecclesiastical politics. The ‘Irish Past’ he argued, shaped ‘the English present’.Footnote ⁵ Thus, Anglesey was not alone in his use of history as a means to attack opponents. In the words of Toby Barnard, this ‘regular revisiting of 1641, though it owed something to supposed improvements in historical methods, was gradually prompted by, and in turn contributed to, contemporary grudges’.Footnote ⁶ The purpose of this article, however, is to move beyond the often-discussed ‘contemporary grudges’ and to focus on the overlooked ‘supposed improvements in historical methods’.

The spat between Anglesey, Castlehaven and Ormond occurred within a wider debate between Whigs and Tories when histories became increasingly partisan, especially after the collapse of the Licensing Act in 1679. Contemporaries claimed that the split that occurred in 1641 in England, presaging civil war, would happen again in the tense conditions of 1678–81, prompting an increasingly acrimonious dispute between Tories and Whigs.Footnote ⁷ As John Dryden succinctly put it: ‘every man is a knave or an ass to the contrary side.’Footnote ⁸ ‘For the most part’, wrote Paulina Kewes, ‘people were unabashed in using history for partisan ends. They recognised that the explicit bias of their treatment of the past would gratify one part of the political spectrum while alienating the other.’Footnote ⁹ Daniel Woolf has argued that a significant historiographical turn occurred in England during this second half of the seventeenth century. Historians began to see patterns of behaviour in the past and from this they began to understand the relationship between the past and the present on a more complex scale, beyond evoking mere historical analogies. Rather than see parallels in the past, from the 1640s onwards historians began to discuss causation, contingency, and contiguity. Furthermore, readers were also given greater access to the source materials that historians consulted and the inclusion of edited versions of historical documents in appendices allowed them to draw their own conclusions. This facilitated a change in reading habits. In short, histories began to understand events as part of a historical process and readers became more critical in their consumption of the histories they read.Footnote ¹⁰ Thus, a key question remains, to what extent did this historiographical turn influence the writing of the Irish past by Anglesey and Borlase? Is there any evidence that the changes in readership practices were mirrored in Ireland?

Toby Barnard, John Gibney, Raymond Gillespie, Michael Perceval-Maxwell and Deana Rankin have already investigated the printed and manuscript outputs of this dispute. This article, however, will provide an in-depth investigation of Anglesey’s draft notes for a history of Ireland and Edmund Borlase’s correspondence following the publication of his The history of the execrable Irish rebellion (1680).Footnote ¹¹ Borlase wished to publish a second edition of his history and had received feedback from his contemporaries on areas for improvement before his death in 1682. His literary agents, however, were less enthusiastic as poor sales and critical comments convinced them that there was little profit to be gained by a second edition. Both of these sources, therefore, offer a fascinating insight into the processes that shaped the construction of historical narratives and, crucially, they reveal that while the immediate political context was important, other factors shaped the writing of these histories. This archival evidence enriches our understanding of the nature of the public debate and facilitates a discussion on reader reception and historical methodologies in the late-seventeenth century.

The details of how leading figures in Irish politics became embroiled in a bitter public dispute over the 1641 rebellion and confederate wars, published by English printing presses, are well known but a brief summary is required here. The appearance of a new edition of John Temple’s Irish rebellion in 1679 and the publication of Edmund Borlase, The history of the execrable Irish rebellion (1680) prompted Castlehaven to compose his memoirs of the 1640s.Footnote ¹² Both Temple’s and Borlase’s histories accused Irish Catholics of perpetrating barbaric massacres against Protestant settlers in Ireland during the 1640s. When Castlehaven showed his memoirs to Anglesey prior to their publication for comment, Anglesey quickly (and publicly) delivered a stinging indictment of Castlehaven’s work. Castlehaven had the temerity, in Anglesey’s eyes, to defend the principles behind the Irish rebellion of 1641 and the confederate wars. Anglesey’s real target, however, was Ormond whose loyalty to the Protestant interest in the 1640s (and by extension, his position in the 1680s) was questioned.Footnote ¹³ Castlehaven defended himself in a hastily composed preface to his memoirs, while Ormond instructed Sir Robert Southwell to prepare an account of his actions in the 1640s that never materialised.Footnote ¹⁴ Anglesey, in the meantime, hoped to publish a substantial history of Ireland that has not survived; only traces of the text survive in his draft notes.

It is important to note that more sophisticated methodologies were employed in the latter half of the seventeenth century when discussing the events of the 1640s than before. An earlier debate centred on the alleged massacre guilt of Irish Catholics and was characterised by invective and bitterness. It is here that Barnard’s characterisation of histories of the Irish rebellion as evidence for ‘contemporary grudges’ is evident as polemicists apportioned guilt for the outbreak of violence in the 1640s.Footnote ¹⁵ Only one account that defended the Irish rebels of 1641 mentioned its historical methodology and claimed that it had consulted unidentified and unnamed evidence in England to substantiate its arguments. In R.S., A collection of some of the murthers and massacres committed against the Irish (London, 1662) the author decried the 1641 depositions as evidence for the massacres of the 1640s and questioned the motives of publishing histories that described the massacres of Protestant settlers during debates over the restoration of Catholic land ownership in Ireland.Footnote ¹⁶ These issues of evidence and research methodology would be dealt with in greater detail during the later debates of the 1670s and 1680s and shaped historical narratives. The purpose of this section is to provide greater detail on how the earl of Anglesey planned his history and what methodology can be inferred from his draft notes. These notes are not simply a valuable source for ‘what seventeenth-century Englishmen thought of Ireland and the Irish rebellion’, rather they provide a perceptive insight into contemporary historical research methodologies.Footnote ¹⁷ They suggest that Anglesey’s project was much more than an attempt to apportion blame for the atrocities of the 1640s or to critique Tory opponents in the 1680s. Rather Anglesey sought to explain the flaws in the colonial relationship between Ireland and England, and the role of the monarchy, the colonial council and the aristocratic elites in Ireland. In short, Anglesey’s history was part memoir and part analysis of the historical processes that led to the outbreak of rebellion. Through an examintion of his notes it is possible to understand Anglesey’s vision for his history, methodology and interpretative framework. This will show what factors shaped the construction of his historical narrative.

Anglesey served as a commissioner for Irish affairs between 1645 and 1647, negotiated the handing over of Dublin city with Ormond in 1647, joined the English privy council in 1660, secured an English earldom in 1662 and became treasurer of the navy in 1667. As a book collector and avid reader Anglesey amassed a considerable library before his death in 1686.Footnote ¹⁸ Michael Perceval-Maxwell has argued that Anglesey prepared his notes for a history of Ireland because he was concerned about his Catholic connections having married two of his daughters to Irish Catholics and having made public declarations of his affection toward Catholicism.Footnote ¹⁹ If his anxiety was justified, it is puzzling that in 1680, with the reverberations of the Popish Plot accusations still being felt, Anglesey openly admitted to entertaining the Roman Catholic bishop of Ferns at his house in Dublin prior to the outbreak of the 1641 rebellion.Footnote ²⁰ Deana Rankin suggested that the public dispute between Ormond and Anglesey provided the spark for the latter to commit more time to his history.Footnote ²¹ Further evidence supports this. By 1680 it was obvious that Anglesey disliked Ormond. Anglesey was part of the Whig party in London which sought to remove Ormond as lord lieutenant of Ireland. Others in Ireland shared this view such as Roger Boyle, the earl of Orrery (d. 1679), and Henry Jones, the bishop of Meath. In his diary, Anglesey made occasional reference to the character of Ormond during the 1670s, questioning whether he took bribes and frequently noting how Ormond continuously slandered him.Footnote ²²

It is undeniable that Anglesey had an axe to grind but his research on the history of Ireland was an intellectual pursuit that had already consumed most of his adult life. He noted on several occasions how he had spent his day ‘in history’.Footnote ²³ By 1682 he had resolved to work on his history for four hours daily.Footnote ²⁴ The first explicit acknowledgement of his Irish history project in his diary occurred on 22 January 1680 when, for an unknown reason, Anglesey recorded that ‘[I] spent all day at home in ye history of Ireland which I resolue to goe on for Gods glory apace with and first to dispatch that part of it since ye Rebellion’.Footnote ²⁵ Rumours had circulated before this about his plans to write a history of Ireland;Footnote ²⁶ he may even have begun this process as early as 1678 when he resolved to organise his notes and ‘sett my bookes & writings in order at home’.Footnote ²⁷ He later claimed, however, that he had been working on his history for a long time prior to this latest controversy. At one stage, probably in June 1683, he confessed that ‘I haue been now aboue 20 yeares gathering materials for this building of my history and that there is yet little of ye publick reared. It is now time to fall to the work with more constancy and diligence.’Footnote ²⁸ This hints at the fact that Anglesey began working at his history of Ireland shortly after the restoration of Charles II, which is confirmed by an account of a conversation he had with the earl of Orrery in 1664 about his proposed history of Ireland.Footnote ²⁹ Anglesey also felt a sense of urgency about completing this history, not just because of his spat with Ormond, but also due to an awareness of his increasing years and a desire to be well remembered, ‘a proper way to supply defects in a continued worke w[hi]ch could not beare longer interruption or delay w[i]th out hazarding a totall miscarrying the Author being entred in the yeare of his life w[hi]ch the psalmist calculates to be the full age of man’.Footnote ³⁰ Perhaps Anglesey wished to defend his honour in his critique of Castlehaven’s memoirs, as has been already suggested.Footnote ³¹ This, however, overlooks his clear scholarly interest in history, particularly of Ireland.

Anglesey’s notes illustrate that his history was part memoir and part analysis of the historical processes that caused the 1641 rebellion; this approach was seen as increasingly valuable in historical narratives in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Furthermore, Anglesey’s history reflected other historiographical trends: understanding causation and offering a more sophisticated awareness of historical trends over time and their influence on contemporary events.Footnote ³² For example, in order to explain why the 1641 rebellion occurred, Anglesey argued that one had to look to the nature of Irish society over time and its composition prior to the arrival of the English in Ireland. This was not simply an attempt at partisanship. It was an unacknowledged reference to expressions of Irish Catholic identity encapsulated by Geoffrey Keating in Foras feasa ar Éirinn. Keating argued that, prior to the arrival of the English in Ireland, Irish chieftains and kings ruled over a civilised society with representative structures and a fair justice system. In this narrative, the Old English were the last true conquerors of Ireland and had nurtured a civilised society there.Footnote ³³ Peter Walsh had reiterated these arguments in 1682. This appears to be another reason why Anglesey began compiling his notes for a history of Ireland.Footnote ³⁴ Anglesey countered Keating’s and Walsh’s arguments by claiming that the English of Ireland established the first equitable legal system on the island, with the express purpose of civilising the Irish. However, powerful magnates and their families (i.e. the Old English) manipulated successive English monarchs and had neglected their true civilising mission. These magnates (most notably, the Butlers of Ormond and especially James Butler, the first duke) tricked a number of English kings into believing that their dynastic interests furthered the royal interest in Ireland. Thus, more loyal servants such as Sir William Parsons, Sir John Temple, Sir Henry Sidney and Anglesey’s forefathers had been outmanoeuvred by Old English duplicity.Footnote ³⁵ Thus, Anglesey viewed the political crisis that erupted over the Popish Plot as part of a wider historical process – the weak structure of Irish colonial politics that facilitated the championing of dynastic causes over colonial priorities. This weakness had been exploited by Irish and Old English families in the past and caused the outbreak of numerous rebellions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Anglesey, in a nod to the arguments of Sir John Davies, believed that Irish people should be treated as direct subjects (as had been enshrined in a proclamation of 1605) and not as servants to corrupt Irish Catholic nobles. On this point, Anglesey praised Oliver Cromwell for treating the Irish as subjects and he called for the due execution of English common law, which would prevent the weakening of the English grip on the Irish colony.Footnote ³⁶ Anglesey’s history, therefore, hoped to offer more than a polemical narrative of the 1640s; rather it sought to point out the structural weaknesses of the Irish colony and to show how these contributed to the climate of partisanship that gripped English and Irish politics in the 1680s.

Anglesey was equally concerned with his authorial voice. He reflected on wider debates about the duty of the historian and the purpose of history, envisaging his work as part of a new departure in history writing: ‘Upon this Account I differ in opinion from the most of men in esteeming of the most ingenious and best course in writing history of ones owne time to doe it whiles the Actors in controuwle [are still alive] and [able to] correct what is liable to exception or mistake.’ This, Anglesey argued, they could do ‘with out passion and with cleer evidence whereby they shall not only oblige this author but posterity’.Footnote ³⁷ No doubt, having read Sir John Temple’s Irish rebellion so closely, Anglesey would have been aware of Temple’s preface in which he debated whether it was appropriate for a participant in past events to write their history.Footnote ³⁸ Richard Bellings may have had a similar concern, for the relationship between his past actions and his historical narrative is quite complex. For these authors, the use of personal memoir to explain the past within the parameters of ‘impartial’ truth complicated their portrayal of the self in their texts. Bellings witnessed many of the events he described and often appears in the first person, while occasionally disguising his participation.Footnote ³⁹ Nicholas French rarely appears as a historical character in the events he described in A narrative of the settlement and sale of Ireland (Louvain, 1668) and in The vnkinde desertor of loyall men and true frinds (Louvain, 1676). Anglesey’s A letter from a person of honour in the country (London, 1680) gives clear biographical information about the author, identifying him as the great-grandson of Sir John Perrot, and son to Francis Annesley, Viscount Valentia. Thus, Anglesey sporadically enters the fray as an unidentified participant.Footnote ⁴⁰ As Anglesey’s history was part memoir, he would probably have followed Bellings’s lead and have spoken in the first person about his role in key events and then in the third person when describing wider events.Footnote ⁴¹ Thus, Anglesey’s desire to be part of the narrative was part of a trend that had consolidated by the start of the eighteenth century, one where historians who could call upon both personal experience and their exemplary knowledge of the past offered the best historical narratives, a point which Anglesey recognised.Footnote ⁴²

Anglesey hoped his work would serve as an instruction manual for his political successors in Ireland. He noted how other authors prepared histories of Ireland for new governors appointed to the country.Footnote ⁴³ As the past was seen to have explicit lessons for the present, histories provided vital guidance for the country’s elites. This, however, could cause controversy. Consider Sir James Perrot’s chronicle of Ireland, allegedly compiled for ‘private knowledge’, and the fact that Sir Richard Bellings did not submit his manuscript history of Ireland in the 1640s to print, fearing that it would cause too much trouble.Footnote ⁴⁴ In this instance, Anglesey hoped to ‘instruct England in the many errors of their proceedings’ and hoped that his history would serve as ‘warning and teaching of posterity to prevent a future rebellion’, a sentiment uttered by Sir James Ware in his publication of Edmund Spenser’s View.Footnote ⁴⁵ According to Anglesey, history served a political purpose, but he viewed this particular scholarly exercise within a much broader time frame – from the conquest of Ireland to the 1680s. Thus, politicians could draw upon five centuries of lessons and they required histories as their source books. Catholic writers had neglected their duties as they ‘idely discourse ye substance for piety and learning and grew rich but contribute neither purse nor paines to ciuilise and reforme that nation’.Footnote ⁴⁶ Thus, Ireland suffered because Catholic historians had failed in their duty to reform the populace. Anglesey, therefore, picked up the gauntlet thrown down by Sir James Ware: ‘[My] history as I hope will want nothing fitt to be said of Ireland, I am sure my utmost diligence hath not been wanting incouraged much by the good wishes and inuitation of that modest and learned man Sr James Ware who lamented in his time that Ireland had no compleat historian, and he did ye most.’Footnote ⁴⁷

Regarding the shape of his historical narrative, it appears that Anglesey placed great emphasis on his preface and conclusion, suggesting that these were the most important sections.Footnote ⁴⁸ The preface was to include a defence of his credentials to write a history of Ireland. These centred around his connections with the English political system at Dublin, his methodology and research. Describing Ireland as his ‘native Country’ he noted his family’s long involvement as governors.Footnote ⁴⁹ In case anybody doubted his scholarly ability Anglesey intended to highlight his education at Oxford University and Lincoln’s Inn. Furthermore, Anglesey argued that he consulted many archives through ‘an unwearied search into the Bodleyan Library, the Records of both Kingdomes remanying in the Tower of London, Castle of Dublin, the Treasuryes of both Exchequeres the Rowles and other courts with the office or registry of both the councels tables, besides the help of a private librarye’.Footnote ⁵⁰ Here it appears that Anglesey was contributing to a wider contemporary conversation about the records consulted by historians. Sir John Temple, for example, claimed that he had consulted the most authentic public records in his preparation of his history of Ireland; where he had no such access he relied upon people of credit to augment his knowledge.Footnote ⁵¹ Anglesey’s preface therefore outlined his identity, his politics and his methodology. His desire to explain to his prospective audience what sources he had consulted (some of which presumably would have formed part of the text) revealed his awareness of the increasing demand for primary source evidence in printed histories. While the sources Anglesey consulted largely reinforced his own political views, he was aware of alternative voices of the past that utilised different interpretative frameworks to understand Irish history.Footnote ⁵² This awareness of polemical and partisan histories contributed to the ‘development of historical method and scrutiny of fact’.Footnote ⁵³ Thus, a consideration of Anglesey’s consultation of sources reveals both his historiographical sophistication and his partisanship.

Anglesey’s sources varied from papers in his own collection, to printed proclamations, pamphlets, and materials gathered during visits to, or borrowings from, other archives.Footnote ⁵⁴ The catalogue of his library made in 1686 included 6,506 books and 178 bundles of pamphlets. He collected a range of works, some of which were subsequently seized by Sir Roger L’Estrange, the official censor, to prevent their further circulation.Footnote ⁵⁵ Anglesey raided other printed sources for his information. For example, he consulted Camden’s history for the epitaph of Richard fitz Gilbert de Clare, or Strongbow, the earl of Pembroke and Striguil, who died in 1176. For other information on the conquest of Ireland, Anglesey used Ware’s The historie of Ireland extensively.Footnote ⁵⁶ The main printed sources for the section on the Irish rebellion were Sir John Temple’s Irish rebellion and Edmund Borlase’s The history of the execrable Irish rebellion.Footnote ⁵⁷ Anglesey consulted the two works for proclamations and other source material which could be used in his own history. His research on the outbreak of the Ulster rising and the failed plot to seize Dublin Castle is taken entirely from both.Footnote ⁵⁸ He hoped to use Temple’s copy of the commission granted to Henry Jones to take witness statements on the rebellion and Borlase’s copy of declarations from the House of Commons.Footnote ⁵⁹ This illustrates a common contemporary use of Temple’s Irish rebellion as a source book.Footnote ⁶⁰ Anglesey also hoped to include as many primary sources as possible in the appendix, and compiled a table of people who sent him information (now lost) for his history ‘thereby to invite any that can afford more to furnish me with them which shall haue their due place by reference as an Appendix’.Footnote ⁶¹ This reflected another historiographical development in the seventeenth century, the inclusion of extensive source evidence for readers to judge the validity of the author’s argument for themselves.Footnote ⁶²

Anglesey utilised his extensive political connections with key political figures across Ireland and England to obtain information. He contacted Bishop Henry Jones of Meath in the 1680s, seeking his assistance in gathering materials for his history. Jones, like Anglesey, managed to serve both the parliament and the Cromwellians and still found himself the subject of royal favour upon the Restoration. By the 1680s, however, Jones had fallen out of favour as acknowledged by Anglesey, ‘I am sorry my Lord Lieut should not use his interest to aduance such as you in the church.’Footnote ⁶³ Anglesey praised Jones for his work criticising the Catholic church and told Jones about sermons published in England on the subject of the papal antichrist.Footnote ⁶⁴ Anglesey wanted to accept Jones’s offer of ‘writings and helpes you haue towards the history of Ireland’ and asked him to search the printed books left in the Irish privy council’s chamber for printed acts and proclamations published since the Irish rebellion’s outbreak.Footnote ⁶⁵ After the death of the earl of Orrery, Anglesey wrote to his widow and executrix asking her to honour her husband’s wishes and send Orrery’s papers to him, as had been agreed in 1664. Orrery had promised to send Anglesey his papers concerning ‘proceedings in Munster wherein he boare a great and honble part, and diuers papers of the Irish, as the notes in Sr Nicholas Plunkett’s handwriting of all that the Irish said in their Assembly against the two peaces’. Anglesey assured the countess that his history and use of Orrery’s papers, ‘will be a ground of honourable mention of your family to posterity’.Footnote ⁶⁶ Despite the fact that Anglesey went to great lengths to consult family papers of his correspondence and political cohorts and to visit other archives, his notes refer only to printed primary texts.Footnote ⁶⁷

From 1678 until 1685, Anglesey re-organised his notes into a manageable system for consultation and periodically sorted his papers into various ‘bundles’ that facilitated this process.Footnote ⁶⁸ This is evidenced in the compilation of his research on the history of Ireland where he prepared some parts of his notes as a chronology. He constructed two separate timelines of Irish history, the first from the English conquest of Ireland in 1169 until 1228.Footnote ⁶⁹ The second chronology related to the outbreak of the 1641 rebellion where Anglesey began a series of blank pages with a particular month written on top, which he intended to fill in with events dated to that month. For example, for the month of November 1641 Anglesey listed four events that occurred in England and Ireland and left the rest of the page blank to be completed at a later date.Footnote ⁷⁰ From this it is clear that he wanted to compile a definitive time-line in order to assist the writing of the history.Footnote ⁷¹ In a short abstract written on 1 September 1682 Anglesey encapsulated his methodology:

Having collated his research Anglesey then proceeded to note ‘observations demonstratively arising’.Footnote ⁷³

From Anglesey’s draft papers it is possible to reconstruct the argument and proposed form of the book, which he envisaged comprising three volumes. The first volume would relate the events in Ireland before the English conquest, ‘that part of the history which like truth lyes deepest and is fullest of obscurity’. The next two volumes would deal with colonial rule in Ireland of which he hoped to ‘furnish better helps and memorials … and better proofes’ than previous works.Footnote ⁷⁴ The third volume would deal with the years 1641 until 1681. Anglesey aimed to publish this first. From the notes that remain, it is clear that this was the area which most preoccupied him. Anglesey paid considerable attention to the introduction of the overall work and the preface to the third volume. He composed a draft title that entertained the idea of labelling the rebellion as ‘black and flagilious’.Footnote ⁷⁵ For ease of reading, Anglesey proposed: ‘to put all amplifications with reference there into an A[p]pendix that they may not knot and interrupt the thred of the history & weary ye Reader and make a preface to be a key to the whole manifesting unbiased impartiality & truth and exact way of writing beyond contradiction to any that loue truth or their country.’Footnote ⁷⁶ This shows an awareness on Anglesey’s part of the changing tastes of readers of history in the early modern period. In a further testament to this he compiled ‘mem[oran]dums for the praeface or conclusion of my history of Ireland’ illustrating the importance attached to these sections for the reader to digest and understand the whole history.Footnote ⁷⁷ Anglesey paid particular attention to the prefaces of Archbishop Ussher and Sir James Ware, noting how Ware’s preface ‘gave me much incouragement to write’.Footnote ⁷⁸ Anglesey’s preface, therefore, was part of a wider culture that placed great emphasis on authors’ epistles to readers as a means to shape the readers’ interpretation.Footnote ⁷⁹

While, on the one hand, Anglesey’s history was a product of the historiographical turn of the late seventeenth cenutry, on the other, it was also a product of the partisanship of the 1680s.Footnote ⁸⁰ Anglesey intended to use the medium of history to defend his own actions and to serve as a manifesto for his political successors. There is ample evidence that he intended to criticise Ormond, his political nemesis, at every available opportunity. Anglesey questioned Ormond’s role in various peace negotiations with Irish ‘rebels’ during the 1640s.Footnote ⁸¹ Similarly, Ormond’s actions upon the outbreak of the rebellion raised Anglesey’s suspicions, ‘wherein Ormonde himselfe ioyned ag[ains]t them though for ends easy to be guessed he after favoured them to the great damage and destruction of ye British’.Footnote ⁸² Yet, this was only one dimension to the history Anglesey wished to write, for he also sought to protect the reputation of his political allies in Ireland throughout his career. He praised parliamentary supporters in Ireland during the 1640s, such as Sir John Temple and Sir Robert Meredith, and expressed his desire to ‘giue S[i]r William Parsons his due Elogie being a person in his generation as knowing the temper of that people and the wayes to reform them as any minister of state was’.Footnote ⁸³ Rather than point to parallels between the past and present, Anglesey wanted to show causation of the crises Protestants faced both in the 1680s and in the 1640s. One could be tempted to assume that his history was simply a defence of his family and his political cohorts, but Anglesey also hoped to show what historical processes paved the way to the crises of the seventeenth century. This history was not merely a discussion of 1641, or the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis, rather it was a critique of the structure of colonial governance in Ireland and the nature of Irish society prior to the English conquest of Ireland.

Anglesey also made reference to rival interpretations of the Irish past and expressed the desire to write his history in Latin, presumably to reach the same audience that Nicholas French, John Lynch and other Catholic writers addressed in their accounts of 1641. Latin was after all ‘a common language by which we communicate with and in most nations’. In the end he ‘chose first to send into the world [this book] in its English dresse resolueing the Latin edition … shall follow’.Footnote ⁸⁴ This would help Anglesey to challenge Catholic authors and their rival interpretations of the wars of the 1640s directly. For example, he lambasted John Lynch’s Cambrensis eversus, noting bitterly, ‘He calles it a ten yeares warre and yet will not allow it to be called a rebellion but a sedition’.Footnote ⁸⁵ The role played by Catholic clergy proved the crux of the problem. Their actions in the 1640s were detestable, so too were their contributions to the wider historiographical debate about the 1640s. According to Anglesey they were ‘like poison tainting ye Nation’.Footnote ⁸⁶ This poisoned Irish Catholic population were now duplicitious and frequently guilty of ‘feigned submissions’; Irish people had to be ‘cured of their barbarisme’.Footnote ⁸⁷ His prejudice against Catholicism is evident throughout his writings, ‘till popery be subdued the English or other nations will neuer settle there with security’. The Reformation had sparked off more rebellions than ever before in Ireland due to their ‘blind [Catholic] zeal carrying them to such wickedness’.Footnote ⁸⁸ This history, however, was more than an exercise in partisanship; it sought to understand causation. Rather than identify Catholic perfidy as the sole cause of Ireland’s troubles, Anglesey believed that long-established historical processes weakened colonial rule in Ireland. The Old English, descendants of the original English invaders of Ireland, many of whom remained Catholic in the seventeenth century, had been ‘cor[r]upted by the Irish’ and their faith.Footnote ⁸⁹ Anglesey, like many of the Old English, had been born in Ireland, but his Protestantism indicated a stronger English identity and saved him from the barbarity of those of Irish ethnicity and the sedition of the Catholic church. The colony, if served by those who prioritised its welfare instead of their own dynastic interests, would prosper – an important message for future English colonists: ‘I owe this to my country and religion being cordially desirous that the place of my birth should be as much England and Protestant as the stock and country from whence I came.’ Thus, Anglesey’s responsibility as a historian was ‘to instruct them [the Irish] in their future duty for Reformation and Happynesse, and to shew them the vanity and folly as well as wickednesse of their attempts ag[ains]t England and their ancient right to Ireland’.Footnote ⁹⁰ Like many other contemporary histories, Anglesey’s intended to shape political policy toward Ireland for future generations.

In a study on the social thought processes that shaped Sir Richard Bellings’s history of the confederate wars, Raymond Gillespie argued that ‘history was perceived to have a social purpose and hence could not be divorced from the world in which it operated’.Footnote ⁹¹ In much the same way, Anglesey believed that his history would serve as a manual for future generations of English colonists to learn how to reduce Ireland to complete obedience from the experience of his family and political allies. Anglesey wished for the maintenance of a strong elite who could uphold order in Ireland, but this was to be English and Protestant, not composed of the remnants of the Old English Catholic nobility as Bellings had hoped for.Footnote ⁹² These New English elites, however, were to remember the true colonial mission and were not to dupe the monarch into promoting their own private vested interests. This historical process could be evidenced several times in Ireland’s past, according to Anglesey. When the Old English did not wield any power, most notably during the reign of Elizabeth I and the Cromwellian regime in Ireland, the colony prospered. When monarchs received bad advice from vested interests in Ireland, however, rebellion ensued. Where Bellings’s historical narrative was ‘an articulation of the world which was about to be lost’, Anglesey’s history blamed Catholic elites whom Bellings defended for the historical weakness of the Irish colony, and he called for additional loyal, English and Protestant nobles to be placed in their stead. Only this policy would remedy the structural weaknesses of the Irish colonial polity.Footnote ⁹³

By addressing the events of the 1680s, Anglesey wished to present his readers with an authoritative and scholarly account of Ireland’s past that spoke to the issues of the late seventeenth century, while showing the role of historical processes in exacerbating contemporary tensions. The interpretative model he drew upon was not only a product of the division between Whigs and Tories, but also an ideology that had been fashioned by his extensive research and his family identity. Many within his family had served the English monarchy. Some had suffered because their seemingly good advice had been ignored due to the influence of Old English royal favourites. Thus, Anglesey also wished to address the Old English foundation myth expressed by Geoffrey Keating and lobby for the maintence of New English Protestants at the top of the Irish political hierarchy. To support his arguments, Anglesey intended to inform the reader of the extent of his archival research and to provide transcripts of important documents. His history, therefore, was more than a personal memoir and a consequence of the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis, it was also a product of the historiographical turn of the late seventeenth century, one that tried to understand causation and the relationship between past and current events and offered detailed archival evidence for its conclusions.

Correspondents were crucial to Anglesey’s archival research. As has already been mentioned, Anglesey relied upon Henry Jones to send on printed acts stored in the Irish privy council’s chamber. Despite their public spat, Ormond offered Anglesey copies of letters in his archive, which Ormond believed would exonerate him in the eyes of posterity.Footnote ⁹⁴ Anglesey sent copies of his correspondence with Ormond to Edmund Borlase who was an avid observer of this dispute.Footnote ⁹⁵ Borlase and Anglesey regularly exchanged letters on various points of Ireland’s history and contemporary events. Borlase, however, used his wider network of correspondents at this time to ascertain how his The history of the execrable Irish rebellion was received among his peers. Borlase’s correspondence from the period thus illustrates how attuned some historians were (or how aware they should have been) to the demands of the market.

Borlase’s history defended the Dublin administration in Ireland during the 1640s against the accusations of Catholic authors such as Castlehaven who blamed William Parsons and John Borlase for the outbreak of violence in 1641. Thus, Edmund sought to defend his father’s reputation. His attempt to exonerate his father in the face of contemporary misgivings may explain why Edmund refused to attach his name to The history of the execrable Irish rebellion despite being a known historical author.Footnote ⁹⁶ After its publication Borlase courted the opinions of his colleagues and friends among the Protestant community in Ireland and Britain (making his authorship an open secret) as he attempted to engage with the reception of his text. This contradiction prompted one of Borlase’s correspondents to question his decision to remain anonymous on the text’s titlepage. Borlase had earlier enquired as to the price of including his name on the frontispiece of a new edition but decided against it, possibly on account of its high cost.Footnote ⁹⁷ Two other motives may have prevented Borlase from claiming authorship. First, he feared prosecution by Sir Roger L’Estrange who maintained a close watch over seditious publications. L’Estrange warned Borlase that ‘I was cautiond 3 or 4 years since, not to license anything upon that subject [the Irish rebellion] without the approbation of the Duke of Ormond & some other of the kings ministers.’Footnote ⁹⁸ Secondly, throughout Borlase’s correspondence it is clear that the author lacked confidence in his work. Two agents of the Stationers’ Company, Robert Clavel and Henry Brome, stoked Borlase’s anxiety.Footnote ⁹⁹ Clavel appeared to delight in relaying privately by letter complaints he had heard about The history of the execrable Irish rebellion to Borlase. In response Borlase sought other opinions on his text in a bid to ease his concerns.

Clavel informed Borlase of criticisms made by George Thorpe, canon of Canterbury, of his work. Allegedly, ‘the parentheses were troublesome being soe long & in some place hee could not make sense of it but that w[hi]ch he was more concern[e]d was, that it might haue been far more to satisfaction composed’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Clavel also revealed that ‘I heard 20 Gentlemen complain at the style & long parentheses of the book’.Footnote ¹⁰¹ As Clavel’s involvement was concerned largely with the profitability of the book, he unsurprisingly lamented ‘I am somewhat Jealous I shall haue a good many returned from Ireland, where I expected the sale of many I sent but 26 thither’.Footnote ¹⁰² In a subsequent letter Clavel criticised Henry Brome for panning Borlase’s history in public, after all, a veneer of success had to be maintained in order to encourage sales.Footnote ¹⁰³ The aspersions cast on his scholarship troubled Borlase greatly. As Clavel repeatedly relayed criticisms of the text, it became clear to Borlase that he had to offer a defence of it. Borlase reflected on his writing style and the fickle nature of popular taste: ‘I cannot say, but what you have written touching my history may be as you relate it. No Books (more then meat) please all Pallates, but I dare say (& saying it, will justifie it) that [The history of the execrable Irish rebellion] mentains its stile & method & sense.’Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Borlase accepted that some passages ‘might have been more clear’ but then related how Sir Roger L’Estrange, Charles II’s main propagandist, complimented his ‘style & method’ as did Sir John Temple Junior, Sir John Temple’s son, who regretted that the time was not more ‘propitious to digest it’.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ At the time of the text’s circulation, fear of the Popish Plot gripped the Protestant populace in England and Ireland. Contemporaries drew parallels with other Catholic plots against the Protestant faith and looked anxiously toward the prospect of a Catholic succession.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Accordingly Borlase advertised his history as one of ‘National Concernment’ and a civic duty.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Borlase clearly believed that the partisanship that gripped English and Irish politics provided a ready market for his work. Its poor reception, however, suggests that Borlase’s scholarship was not up to contemporary standards.

Unfortunately for Borlase most of those in his social circle did not share his views on his text and complimented him with questionable sincerity. Richard Parr, later biographer of James Ussher, comforted Borlase about the objections made by Henry Brome regarding his history.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Parr assured Borlase, ‘I can hardly believe Mr Broom [sic] has sayd such a thing, but if I find he has then must I treat him as an unworthy selfe contradicting man ungrateful and false perhaps he may … have some familiarity with papists’.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Criticisms of Borlase’s style and method preoccupied him as he requested his friends to seek the opinion of influential people. In some cases he received positive feedback. Parr informed him of the favourable reception of the text in London: ‘The Lord Bishop of London [Humphrey Henchman] likes your history mighty well and the continuation of that story until 62’. Parr believed that other Whigs hoped to use The history of the execrable Irish rebellion as evidence against their Tory rivals when parliament reconvened.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Others complimented Borlase’s scholarship; one correspondent even exclaimed that ‘I would not suffer me to drawe off my eye till I had surveyed the whole of it’ and that ‘your appendix was judicious’.Footnote ¹¹¹ In England at least, Borlase’s narrative of the 1641 rebellion appealed to some members of the burgeoning Whig movement in England that campaigned against James’ succession.

John Finglas, who held a prebendary in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, proved a vocal supporter of Borlase’s history, which he used as the basis for a sermon on the Protestant martyrs of 1641, while the archbishop of Armagh lauded Borlase as a ‘ffaithfull watchman’ over the Protestant faith.Footnote ¹¹² Borlase also received accounts of the limited circulation of the text in various urban centres, suggesting a demand for the book. Andrew Sall, prebend of Cashel, told Borlase that by July 1680 the text had not yet reached him: ‘The place where I live is unfortunate in ye want of books and bookish men which makes me lament the loss of noble England to me so as I could neither meet with your excellent histories or with [those] that had read it.’Footnote ¹¹³ Despite these glowing endorsements (or attempts at flattery), Borlase was unconvinced that the text was well received among the New English of Ireland. A casual remark by Samuel Gellibrand, printer of Sir John Temple’s Irish rebellion, tormented Borlase. Gellibrand informed him that John Temple’s son disliked the work. This prompted Borlase to write to John Temple Junior. In a reply Temple Junior explained ‘I never did say, so lerch or slighting thinge of you, for whom I know, my father had a kindnesse’.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Although one must be wary of the younger Temple’s praise for The history of the execrable Irish rebellion, his constructive criticism echoed the opinions of others in Ireland. He wrote: ‘The greatest fault that I haue found with your booke hath beene that there is no more of it, there being many remarkable things, after the first yeare of the Rebellion, either wholly left out, or but lightly touched upon.’Footnote ¹¹⁵ Temple appeared less concerned about Gellibrand’s comments. His main grievance concerned the price Gellibrand charged for his unbound copy of Borlase’s book: ‘Mr Gellibrand might have told you who made mee pay 16s for it, which may perhaps bee something aboue the common rate that it is sold at.’Footnote ¹¹⁶ This was considerably more than the twelve shilings that Parr paid for his copy which came pre-bound.Footnote ¹¹⁷

Others avoided having to pay for Borlase’s work as the author sent out numerous free copies. Through this ploy Borlase hoped to receive feedback on his scholarship and anxiously sought the opinion of Henry Jones, the original ‘historian’ of the 1641 rebellion. Henry Jones had earlier sent on copies of the 1641 depositions through an intermediary, Richard Tennison, a cleric in his diocese. In return, Borlase dispatched a free copy of The history of the execrable Irish rebellion as a token of his gratitude. Borlase wrote to William Molyneux seeking some indication as to what Henry Jones thought of it. Molyneux at first was more than willing to oblige but confessed that ‘he [Jones] had not as yet wholly perused it, yet he intended as soon as his occasion would permit to read it’.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Instead Molyneux offered his own critcial views and pointed out numerous mistakes. Molyneux heard the lord chancellor of Ireland, Michael Boyle, excoriating Borlase for overlooking affairs in Munster and neglecting the records of Lord Inchiquin, Protestant commander in Munster, ‘which give a full account of the whole affair of those parts’.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Others chastised Borlase for treating affairs in Ulster too generally and for his belief that Drogheda and Tredagh were two distinct places (a probable indicator of the fact that Borlase spent a limited amount of time in Ireland).Footnote ¹²⁰ Such criticisms heightened Borlase’s insecurity. Desperately, he urged Molyneux to continue his pursuit of Jones’s opinion. An exasperated Molyneux replied that ‘I am asham[e]d and wearied with soliciting him’, and that ‘I fear [Jones is] no longer to be relyed on, he told me that he liked your history very much whereas I heard from an other that he did not approve of it’.Footnote ¹²¹ It later transpired that Jones disliked Borlase’s history. In a letter to Jones, Anglesey claimed he would ‘make vse of [the materials you have given me] more to your satisfaction then it seemes Dr Burlacie hath done’.Footnote ¹²² In the end, a demoralised Parr confessed that ‘I wish that those who find fault would hold their peace or do better then you have done’.Footnote ¹²³ In the absence of contemporary book reviews it appears that this informal gauging of opinion through personal networks provided the necessary feedback for authors to improve their work should they publish a later edition. Their feedback suggested that some clergymen in the Church of Ireland and the Church of England liked The history of the execrable Irish rebellion (with the notable exception of Henry Jones), but members of the laity had difficulty accepting Borlase’s style and argument because of his poor scholarship.

Despite the criticisms of his text, Borlase planned to publish a second edition and intended to change the titlepage so that it included his authorship, replete with his academic qualifications: ‘By Edm Borlase Esqr MD.’Footnote ¹²⁴ Borlase wished to rectify typographical mistakes and corrected many small errors such as changing the word ‘found’ to ‘form’d’.Footnote ¹²⁵ Furthermore, in light of the criticisms of the archives and manuscripts that he had consulted, Borlase wanted to include subsequent research he had conducted on manuscripts belonging to Sir John Temple, John Watson (one of the deposition commissioners) and correspondence from Richard Tennison and Henry Jones about murders mentioned in the depositions but that had not been previously published.Footnote ¹²⁶ There is not enough evidence to suggest that Borlase wanted to extensively rewrite his history in order to satisfy his critics. If anything, Borlase hoped to reach out to his Whig allies by adding evidence of Charles I’s complicity in the Irish rebellion. Such an addition would have bolstered opposition to the Tories.Footnote ¹²⁷ Nonetheless, the key point is that Borlase’s history was not always well-received even among audiences that would have been pre-disposed to his argument. This suggests that partisanship alone was not the sole requirement to write a ‘good’ history, historians still had to present a convincing argument based on solid research, free from the numerous errors committed by, and pointed out to, Borlase.

While much is known about the political context surrounding the publication of Borlase’s The history of the execrable Irish rebellion and Anglesey’s preparation of his history of Ireland, this article has shown that other important factors shaped the research and writing of these accounts. These histories were not simply part of a highly partisan debate between participants in the wars of the 1640s, nor were they merely about the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis. They reflected the historiographical turn and the changes in readers’ tastes and habits in the late-seventeenth century. Anglesey’s desire to set out the extent of the archival research he conducted, and criticisms of Borlase’s shabby scholarship, illustrates how readers expected a certain standard from the histories that they read. This also suggests that historians needed to bear in mind another key context to history writing: the book market. Borlase’s agents were unhappy with the venture they had invested in and they wished for Borlase to rectify his mistakes, which he stubbornly refused to do. In contrast, Anglesey had a greater affinity with his peers’ and readers’ expectations. His methodological approach combined with his ownership of 746 histories suggests a man comfortable with this particular genre as both an avid reader and scholar.Footnote ¹²⁸

While Anglesey and Borlase wished to contribute to contemporary political discussions, both were aware of the latest historiographical developments. They were keen to provide a whole host of original documentation to support their arguments. Criticisms that Borlase had neglected the Inchiquin archive in Cork and Anglesey’s attempts to scour the contemporary record reveal the value vested in archival research in the seventeenth century. Furthermore, Anglesey’s central argument and his research underlined his attempts to understand the crises of the 1670s and the 1680s as a result of long-standing historical problems that blighted colonial government in Ireland. He developed a chronicle of Irish history in his notes (chronicles were, by the 1680s, out of fashion) but used this to understand historical processes and to engage in meaningful debates about the nature of the Irish colony and how this facilitated certain actions by prominent individuals (most notably, Ormond) in the wars of the 1640s. Thus, Anglesey’s and Borlase’s contributions to the printed debate in the 1680s were as much a product of the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis as they were of the historiographical turn and the change in reading habits which occurred in the late-seventeenth century across Britain and Ireland.Footnote ¹²⁹