David Fleming's meticulously researched biography of Edmund Sexten Pery provides an authoritative, richly substantiated account of Pery's political career, serving to fill out A. P. W. Malcolmson's sketch of Pery in a well-known article published in 1974 and endorsing the strongly positive verdict on him provided therein. If anything, Fleming goes further than Malcolmson in his positive evaluation, although he is careful not to overstate his case. Pery did ‘more than most’ (p. 266), as he characteristically phrases it, to sustain and embed patriotism as an ideology and political platform in the public mind in the 1750s and 1760s. As speaker of the House of Commons between 1771 and 1785, he also, Fleming shows, exhibited real tenacity and political adroitness in facilitating the patriots’ key successes — the winning of ‘free trade’ in 1778–9 and legislative independence in 1782.

For all, however, the very impressive detail with which Fleming reveals the different stages of Pery's political career, as well as his very notable role as an economic improver, quite a lot about him remains hidden. For one thing, this is a very much the biography of Pery the public man and figure. Fleming gives us what glimpses he can of Pery's private and family life, but these are few and not especially illuminating. For another, once he became speaker, much of his political work was done behind the scenes. Pery's importance in 1778–9 and 1782, and, indeed, for much of his later political career, stemmed from his role as a confidential adviser to the administration of the day, but also the connections which he maintained with various key figures in London. Another element of his career which remains something of a puzzle is how and why he became a patriot in the first place. When he first entered the Irish Parliament, he attached himself to the faction led by Archbishop George Stone, who was seeking to wrest political control away from Henry Boyle, the then speaker. Fleming speculates that he learnt valuable negative lessons from this episode which ended in a political deal between factions and Dublin Castle, one of which was to detach himself from political factions and pursue a staunchly independent political line thereafter. Whether his initial decision to adopt patriotism was driven by ambition — as a means to lever himself into office — remains unclear. One of his major achievements thereafter, given the realities of political life in this period, was to nurture his own political ambition without sacrificing fundamentally his independence or political consistency. One might argue that in this he was fairly fortunate, given that the speakership offered possibilities in this context which other offices did not, as Henry Flood for one discovered. That his elevation to this role was something over which he had very little control perhaps only reinforces the point. Backing Pery as a candidate for the role of speaker was for the then lord lieutenant, Lord Townshend, a political gamble. Fleming demonstrates how, in the changed conditions of political life after 1771, Pery was able to interpret the role in ways that protected his reputation as a Patriot. Not that he was immune to the advantages of favour from administrations and he knew his political value. Nor was he backward in using his political position and great knowledge of parliamentary procedure to secure money and legislation which favoured the interests of Limerick, where his main estate was located.

Pery is probably best known, apart from his role as speaker, for his promotion and development of Limerick's Newtown, one of various schemes to develop the town and local economy of which Pery was a keen supporter, promoter and participant. Fleming suggests that the notion that he exploited his position for personal economic gain is ‘probably unfair’ (p. 185). Such comment is in keeping with his measured, cautious tone throughout; a positive feature of the book is its author's resistance to going beyond what the evidence can bear in respect of adjudication of such issues and views about Pery's motivations in various contexts. Nevertheless, it is clear that Fleming views Pery's patriotism as constituting the bedrock of his political personality. His career after the climacteric of the late 1770s and early 1780s is inevitably less compelling. As a peer after 1785, he seems to have broadly supported the administration, although, as Fleming shows, the old patriot heart could revive under suitable provocations, such as the Regency crisis and, finally, the British-Irish Union, to which Pery was firmly opposed. Fleming explains early on why he views a biography of Pery as desirable: that it can help us understand how Irish patriot ideology became a prevailing feature of Irish political discourse in the later eighteenth century; and that it sheds valuable light on how political interests and ideology operated together. This seems to be asking quite a lot of what is a political biography written in a fairly traditional manner, and where the focus is not so much ideology, or the politicisation of public opinion, but political craft and tactics. Fleming undoubtedly succeeds, however, in drawing Pery out from the political shadows, and his biography is an important addition to the literature on patriot politics in eighteenth-century Ireland.