This is the first full-length study of the Protestant middle-class Patriots of Dublin, who, in the eighteenth-century, made up the largest concentration of Protestants in Ireland (c.70,000). Freemen of the guilds alone—who were entitled to a parliamentary vote—were almost as numerous as the entire landed class. Hill charts the slow and difficult progress of these merchants, master craftsmen, and shopkeepers, from Patriotism in the eighteenth century to a Unionist position in the nineteenth, throwing light on all subsequent Irish history, and filling an important gap in the historiography of Unionism.
Author(s): Jacqueline Hill
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Year: 1997
Language: English
Pages: 464
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Maps
List of Tables
Abbreviations and Conventions
Maps
Introduction
Part 1. The Origins and Growth of Dublin Civic Patriotism, 1660—1791
1. Ancien-régime Dublin: The City and the Guilds
2. Dublin Corporation and the State, 1660—1714
3. The Challenge to Oligarchy: The Political Context, 1714—1749
4. Civic Patriotism in Action: Setbacks and Gains, 1750—1773
5. Dublin Patriots in the American Revolutionary Era, 1774—1782
6. The Indian Summer of Civic Patriotism, 1783—1791
Part 2. Patriots Divided: The Phoney War, 1792—1814
Introduction
7. The Economic and Social Background in Dublin after the Quarterage Dispute, c.1780—1814
8. ‘Protestant Ascendancy’, Challenge and Definition, 1791—1793
9. The Constitution Defended: Opposition to Rebellion, 1792—1798
10. The Constitution Defended: Opposition to Union, 1798—1814
Part 3. From Patriots to Unionists, 1815—1840
Introduction
11. The Economic and Social Background, 1815—1840
12. Security Versus Conciliation, 1815—1822
13. The Ancien Régime Defended, 1822—1832
14. The Corporate World Unravels, 1815—1840
Conclusion
Appendix A. Dublin Guilds and the Trades they Served
Appendix B. Dublin City MPs, 1660—1841
Appendix C. Recorders of Dublin, 1660—1841
Select Bibliography
Index
