Catholics and the law in Restoration Ireland

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Paul Smith
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In Restoration Ireland the law primarily served the interests of the English state and the Anglo-Protestant community, and oppressed the majority Catholic population. Analysing the letters of Oliver Plunkett and John Brenan demonstrates the initial success and ultimate failure of their non-confrontational approach to legal and political processes. Other clerics took a more challenging stance. The lives and writings of Nicholas French and John Lynch have been noted; less so those of Edmond O’Reilly and John O’Molony. Exploring their distinct approaches provides a new perspective on the wide variety of clerical engagement with the law. Irish-language literary material has been little examined in this context. The work of Dáibhí Ó Bruadair and has contemporaries is considered to show how Gaelic Ireland deeply resented a hostile legal environment. Some Catholic landed families recovered their estates in the 1663 Court of Claims and this book evidences the different approaches they adopted to this unique opportunity despite Protestant hostility. The lives and careers of lawyers John Walshe, William Talbot and Gerard Dillon have been little noted. This book interrogates the considerable corpus of primary sources to illustrate how Catholic lawyers could survive, even thrive for a period. The rise and fall of James II proved their undoing as it did for all of Catholic Ireland. This book explores and illustrates the many ways in which Irish Catholics experienced a legal system that proved fundamentally inimical to their interests.

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