This rich and vigorous biographical study of Roger Boyle (1621–79), baron of Broghill and later earl of Orrery, explores his military, political, and administrative careers in his native Ireland, Scotland, and England from his rise to prominence after the 1641 Irish Rebellion through to the post-Restoration years. However, at heart this volume offers an important and detailed reappraisal of Broghill's prominent role in English and British Protectoral politics of the mid- and later 1650s. His apparent shifts from loyal royalist upbringing to disaffection from the king's cause during the 1640s to active and prominent support for the republican and Cromwellian regimes of the 1650s and back to loyalty to and favor from the restored Stuart crown after 1660 have led to hostile interpretations of Broghill as a turncoat and Machiavellian for whom self-preservation and self-interest won out over principle or consistency. In contrast, others have followed Broghill's earliest biographer in detecting a fundamental royalism and consistent loyalty to the Stuart cause, arguing that in 1649 he was forced or seduced into serving Cromwell and that his apparent loyalty to the regimes of the 1650s represented an unhappy, fragile compromise, leading to later feelings of guilt.

Patrick Little has little time for either interpretation. Instead, he argues strongly and convincingly that Broghill coherently and consistently worked to safeguard and promote the position of the established “old” Protestants of Ireland and that his political, religious, parliamentary, and “British” policies were all shaped by that goal. He had other loyalties, sympathies, and hobbyhorses, explored here—to his father and his family; to a providentialist Calvinist faith that led him to favor limited toleration and a union of Presbyterians and moderate Independents but to oppose more radical sects and complete religious liberty, just as he bitterly hated and distrusted Catholics and Catholicism; and to orderly civilian forms of government, leading him during the Protectorate to encourage the traditionalist and civilianizing drift of the regime. However, Little demonstrates that Broghill always put Protestant Ireland first, championing the Protestant interest against any threats to its position, religion, and property. Thus in the wake of the Irish Catholic rebellion he firmly opposed the Catholics and anyone—including Charles I and Ormond—who seemed willing to do a deal with them, just as in the first half of the 1650s he was wary of unhelpful parliamentary regimes that gave power in Ireland to English military figures and the radical sects they encouraged. Whenever forced to choose between the Protestant cause in Ireland and allegiance to the crown, he chose the former. Thus he was a late and lukewarm convert to royalism in 1660, regretting the fall of the Protectorate and of Henry Cromwell in Ireland, whose policies generally bolstered the established Irish Protestants, and worrying about how the returning Stuarts might handle religion and the land settlement in Ireland; his fears were, in part, realized, for Charles II's leniency toward Irish Catholics and Catholicism alarmed him. Thus Little argues that Broghill's overriding sentiment after 1660 was not guilt but regret.

Little covers the whole of Broghill's life and career, from his upbringing pre-1641 and his emergence as a leading light of the Protestant interest in Ireland during the conflicts of the 1640s through to his return to favor after the Restoration and his closing years in office and in retirement in Munster; a trio of thematic chapters give an overview of Broghill's family, finances, and faith. However, this study focuses on the period from Oliver Cromwell's Irish campaign, which Broghill actively supported, through to the parliamentary battles of 1656–57 and on to the Restoration. Under the heading “The Rise and Fall of the Cromwellian Union,” four central, detailed, and chronologically structured chapters examine Broghill's major roles in Ireland, Scotland, and England during the interregnum, assessing his record as military leader, administrator, and politician, exploring his relationship with the Cromwells, and examining his “British” outlook. Broghill is shown at his most optimistic and influential during Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate, allying with and favored by the Lord Protector and by his younger son in Ireland. In return, Broghill served the Protector as chief administrator of Scotland in 1655–56—where, Little shows, as in Ireland, he sought to pursue mainly moderate policies that would strengthen the position of the Protestant landholders, diminish the power of English military men and sectaries, and build a broad Protestant and Protectoral alliance embracing Presbyterians and former royalists—and as a leader of the “old” Irish Protestants both in Ireland itself and in the Protectorate parliaments, especially the session of 1656–57. Little marshals surviving evidence to argue that in this long and crucial session, Broghill constructed a broad parliamentary alliance comprising Irish and Scottish MPs, Presbyterians, country gentlemen, and courtiers and served as its leader in opposing John Lambert, the army, and militarized rule and in supporting the new constitution in general and kingship in particular. But his power and apparent victory of spring 1657 were shattered by Cromwell's rejection of the crown, and thereafter his influence and optimism waned.

Little's portrait of Broghill as a prudent and consummate politician, willing to wait on events and often able skillfully to turn them to his advantage—even if, after 1657, events had a habit of turning against him—as well as his interpretation of Broghill as a man who consistently followed consistent religious and political principles grounded in post-Rebellion Protestant Ireland, is generally convincing and is ably supported by substantial new research and extensive use of contemporary sources. The surviving evidence has been squeezed just about as far as it will go, and if occasionally there are remaining gaps or nagging doubts—was Broghill really so much the “ringleader” of the dominant faction in the 1656–57 parliamentary session, even able to “control affairs by remote-control through his numerous allies” when he was absent from the House (125)?—it is unlikely that anyone will be able to take the Broghill of the 1650s much further or paint a fuller and more rounded picture than Little. This is an excellent, thoughtful, and important biographical study, full of ideas and resonances. A more competitively priced paperback edition would make this fine volume more accessible and enable it to reach the wider audience it deserves.