The contents of this volume of essays range well beyond the date range indicated in its title, although the use instead of ‘1426–1898’ would admittedly have looked somewhat awkward. With chapters focused on the ‘western liberty of Meath’ and eighteenth-century Spain, neither is the book confined to urban Ireland. These qualities help to render this collection all the more fitting as a tribute to the honorand. For while Colm Lennon may be the ‘doyen of the historians of early modern Dublin’ (p. 249), his contribution to historical scholarship extends much further than that title suggests. This point is reinforced by the volume's ‘Select list of publications’, covering items published between 1975 and 2015. While such lists are of course a standard feature of the Festschrift, it appears here alongside several complementary pieces that serve to give particular insight into Lennon's career and research. There is an editors’ preface, an appreciation penned by two former colleagues at Maynooth and then a reflection on Lennon's scholarship contributed by Steven G. Ellis. This material takes up the opening 31 pages and sets the scene very well for what follows, not least because many of the essays evidently take their lead from the example set by Lennon's various scholarly endeavours.

Following Lennon's example is one thing, but surpassing his work is quite another. As Lennon's primary focus has been on early modern Dublin, he has been able to exploit the best set of surviving archives for the history of an Irish urban settlement. Some of the source limitations of what can be recovered about other Irish towns in the sixteenth century are shown by Henry A. Jefferies's chapter on ‘Tudor reformations in Cork’. Jefferies makes very good use of evidence drawn from archaeology and from testamentary material to chart the progress of religious change in Cork. Marian Lyons’ chapter on Thomas Arthur MD brings together aspects of Dublin history and fresh insights into seventeenth-century Limerick, another Irish town studied by Lennon. Lyons’ chapter conveys very well the ‘limits of Old English liberty’, or rather the ways in which a Catholic pursuing a medical a career in an urban setting could avoid some of the disadvantages faced by co-religionists whose skills were less in demand among Protestant servants of church and state.

Lyons’ chapter brings out a theme that can also be followed in some other contributions: the frequent slipperiness and negotiability of the confessional divide in urban settings in early modern Ireland. The only chapter where the divide appears fairly firm and fast is in Alan Ford's study of an acrimonious religious disputation in 1600 between the imprisoned Jesuit Henry Fitzsimon and the Trinity student James Ussher. But even there, the disputants were cousins drawn from the same Old English aldermanic milieu. By contrast, Toby Barnard highlights ‘sermon-tasting’ where one might not expect to find it, inspired by Father John Murphy in mid-eighteenth-century Dublin. Bernadette Cunningham's chapter on ‘Nuns and their networks in early modern Galway’ demonstrates how the women concerned were forced to adapt to fluctuations in the temperature of confessional conflict, with the continent acting as a vital place of refuge at moments of acute tension. Raymond Gillespie's contribution, meanwhile, deals with Anglican–Presbyterian relations in Belfast in a manner that, especially for the 1710s, perhaps invites comparison with Catholic–Protestant cleavages. Turning back to Dublin again, Jacqueline Hill's study of oaths and oath-taking in the period 1660–1774 is revealing, not least on the extent to which in the Restoration period various oaths had limited impact on Catholics’ efforts to secure urban freedom and to pursue their trades.

Chapters by Nessa Malone and Thomas O'Connor serve to widen the focus somewhat. Malone reconstructs the careers of two lawyers involved in organizing Old English opposition to Elizabethan policy, situating both men carefully in the educational and political contexts in which they operated between London and Dublin. O'Connor makes use of Spanish Inquisition records to examine the experiences of Catholic and Protestant weavers from Dublin who migrated to Spain in the mid-eighteenth century, a perspective that acts as a nice counterpoint to the other chapters. The lively scholarship on show is reinforced by the reproduction of primary sources in the chapters by Ford and by Mary Esther Clark and Gael Chenard on the religious guild of St George the Martyr. Rory Masterson's chapter on Meath, meanwhile, offers a rich compendium of information on monastic property in the Midlands.

As the volume opened with a sustained focus on Colm Lennon, it is perhaps fitting that it closes with Ciaran Brady's dissection of the career of John T. Gilbert, Lennon's most illustrious predecessor in the ranks of Dublin historians. Brady's ability to lay bare the motivations and character flaws of his subject is most impressive, if also perhaps a little unsettling for any historians who can find time to concern themselves with the judgment of posterity.