This collection explores the complex political thinking of a fundamental period of Irish history. It investigates the great political issues of the day - the constitutional thinkers and politicians involved in these struggles.

Notes on the Contributors Preface 'Firm Catholics' or 'Loyal Subjects'? Religious and Political Allegiance in Early Seventeenth-Century Ireland; A.Ford Thomas Sheridan: Toleration and Royalism; V.Geoghegan The Political Ideas of Anglican Ireland in the 1690s; R.Eccleshall The Road to Wood's Halfpence and Beyond: William King, Jonathan Swift, and the Defence of the National Church, 1689-1724; D.G.Boyce Public and Political Opinion in Ireland and the Idea of an Anglo-Irish Union, 1650-1800; J.Kelly Ideas of Union in Anglo-Irish Political Discourse, 1692-1720: Meaning and Use; D.Hayton Ulster Presbyterians and the Confessional State, c.1688-1733; A.McBride The Languages of Politeness and Sociability in Eighteenth-Century Ireland; T.Barnard Politics and the Writing of History: The Impact of the 1690s and 1790s on Irish Historiography; J.Hill Republicans Before the United Irishmen: The Case of Dr Charles Lucas; J.Smyth Volunteer Thought: William Crawford of Strabane; N.Vance 'A Perfect Liberty': The Rise and Fall of the Irish Whigs 1789-97; N.J.Curtin Index

TOBY BARNARD Hertford College, Oxford NANCY CURTIN Department of History, University of Fordham, New York ALAN FORD Department of Theology, University of Nottingham DAVID HAYTON School of Modern History, Queen's University, Belfast JACQUELINE HILL Department of History, St Patrick's College, Maynooth JAMES KELLY St Patrick's College, Drumconda, Dublin IAN MCBRIDE Department of History, King's College, London JIM SMYTH Department of History, University of Notre Dame, Indiana NORMAN VANCE School of English and American Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton

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