In recent years there has been a proliferation of scholarship on Irish Catholic migration to the continent in the wake of the Williamite war (1689–91) and concomitant land confiscations. Less well known are the lives and experiences of Irish Catholics who remained in Ireland in the aftermath of the conflict. Using the life and career of Colonel John Browne (1638–1711), an Irish Catholic landowner from County Mayo, as a case study, Kinsella's book offers an in-depth analysis of Catholic elite society in Ireland during a period of major social, political and economic upheaval. Based on original and meticulous research in archives and repositories in Ireland and the United Kingdom, Kinsella's study demonstrates the ways in which this propertied class utilised their connections within the political and legal arenas in order to safeguard their landed interests. In so doing, Catholic survival in Protestant Ireland offers a welcome reassessment of Catholic political and social activity and of the overall vitality of Catholic Ireland during the final decades of the seventeenth century.

Organised into three parts, part one, ‘The rise and fall of the “new interest”’, provides an overview of the life and career of John Browne, an exemplar of the upwardly mobile Catholic ‘new interest’ class that emerged in Ireland after the Restoration. Admitted to Gray's Inn and the King's Inns, by the 1670s Browne was one of the largest landowners in Ireland with an estate that comprised vast tracts of land in Galway and Mayo (over 155,000 acres) together with an ironworks that later supplied munitions and weaponry for the Jacobite war effort. As befitting his status as one of the west of Ireland's leading landowners, Browne was responsible for the construction of Westport House, County Mayo, which remained the seat of his descendants until 2017.

Notwithstanding his vast acquisition of land and wealth during the 1670s, the 1680s signalled a decline in Browne's fortunes so that at the outbreak of the war in 1689 he was in debt to the tune of more than £30,000 (owed predominantly to Irish Protestant creditors). This debt was largely incurred through the establishment and operation of Browne's ironworks, which as Kinsella's study reveals was a costly and precarious financial enterprise in seventeenth-century Ireland. During the war Browne was an important Jacobite supporter; he mobilised resources for the Jacobite army and acted as a negotiator and signatory of the articles of Limerick (one of several articles of surrender that ended the war and sought to safeguard Catholic landed and propertied interests).

Part two, ‘The articles of surrender’, explores in meticulous (albeit at times tedious) detail the negotiation, drafting and implementation of these articles of surrender. In the case of the articles of Limerick, Kinsella demonstrates how Browne used his position of authority and influence to secure the incorporation of a controversial clause that was to have longstanding implications for the Catholic landed gentry: article 13 ensured that liability for his personal debt was not borne by Browne alone, but shared among all Catholic landowners who had retained their land under the various articles of surrender (this group of Catholic landowners are referred to in Kinsella's study as the ‘articlemen’). This shared liability was to be achieved through the imposition of a special levy exacted from the articlemen which they subsequently bitterly contested. As Kinsella contends, article 13 ‘constituted a beguiling piece of chicanery on Browne's part’ (p. 152) and sparked lingering resentment among his co-religionists.

The third part, ‘Article 13 of Limerick’, adumbrates how in the aftermath of the signing of the articles of Limerick the articlemen vigorously lobbied the Dublin and London governments to prevent the implementation of the controversial article. The articlemen's lobbying efforts were matched by Browne who together with his creditors employed agents to petition for the implementation of legislation that would give full legal force to the terms agreed at Limerick. The Irish parliament had a vested interest in ensuring the implementation of article 13 since some of Browne's creditors were themselves privy councillors. Thus Browne's supplications ultimately prevailed and in 1695 the Irish parliament passed an act which gave formal legislative backing to the article and set out a clear system of repayments. Browne's financial difficulties did not end there since the act also legislated for the sale of his estate to cover any debts not recouped by the levy. Browne remained occupied with the disposal of his estate and the repayment of his debts for the rest of his life. However, as Kinsella's study makes clear, ultimately his financial problems did not have an enduring impact on his family in the long-term since by the end of the eighteenth century the Brownes of Westport had reasserted themselves as one of the leading landowners in the western province.

Based largely on a Ph.D. thesis, the book is quite dense in parts and would have benefited from some judicious pruning to make the main points stand out more clearly. Notwithstanding this, it is an important contribution to the field of Irish Catholic political, military, social and economic history during the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. It brings to light the extensive networks of kinship and patronage that existed between Catholic and Protestant gentry elites in Ireland and beyond and highlights the nature of the conflicts that could emerge even between co-religionists. It will be valuable reading for scholars and students interested in Jacobitism, the Williamite war and land confiscations but will also appeal to those with interests in the field of Catholic and Protestant social, religious and family history.