Catholics and the Law in Restoration Ireland

In Restoration Ireland the law primarily served the interests of the English state and the Anglo-Protestant community and oppressed the majority Catholic population. Catholics and the law in Restoration Ireland examines how Catholics engaged with and experienced English common law primarily through the accounts of Catholic clerics and Gaelic poets. Analysing the letters of Oliver Plunkett and John Brenan, this book demonstrates the initial success and ultimate failure of their non-confrontational approach to legal and political processes. In contrast, the challenging stances of clerics like Nicholas French and John Lynch offer a new perspective on the wide variety of clerical engagement with the law. Drawing on the considerable corpus of primary sources, the book examines the often overlooked Irish-language literary material and considers the work of Dáibhí Ó Bruadair and his contemporaries to show how Gaelic Ireland deeply resented a hostile legal environment. It also explores Catholic landed families who recovered their estates in the 1663 Court of Claims and evidences the different approaches they adopted despite Protestant hostility, as well as illustrating how Catholic lawyers could survive, and even thrive, for a period. Catholics and the law in Restoration Ireland examines the many ways in which Irish Catholics experienced a legal system that proved fundamentally inimical to their interests.