Abstract
During the past few years there has been much excitement, and some self-congratulation, among English historians over the rediscovery of what has been termed ‘the British dimension’ to England’s story. By this is usually meant the manner in which the realms of Ireland, Scotland and England reacted with each other during the early modern period and helped to shape the development of each other. More rarely, it involves an acknowledgement by an English scholar that the histories of the other two nations might be worth studying in their own right. These developments are undoubtedly both important and praiseworthy, restoring elements to the story of Tudor and Stuart England, in particular, without which it was at times gravely distorted. None the less, there is a danger that too much self-satisfaction over what has occurred may lead to other distortions and insensitivities. For one thing, there is a problem of language. The archipelago concerned consists of two main islands, the larger being Britain and the smaller Ireland. The term ‘British’, therefore, can only correctly apply to the larger island, and to stretch it to cover the latter involves a geographical error coupled with a potential political statement.
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Bibliography
There is no narrative history of the British Isles during the Restoration period to compare with that of Gardiner for the preceding age and that of Macaulay for the succeeding one. For general surveys the reader has to make do with the most recent textbooks upon the respective nations which cover these years, most notably T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin and F.J. Byrne (eds), A New History of Ireland (Oxford, 1976), volume 3,
Rosalind Mitchison, Lordship to Patronage: Scotland 1603–1745 (London, 1983),
and Keith M. Brown, Kingdom or Province? Scotland and the Regal Union (London, 1992).
A survey of how government policy was made for both kingdoms is found in Ronald Hutton, Charles II: King of England, Scotland and Ireland (Oxford, 1989).
There is no exact equivalent for the reign of James VII & II, although useful material is found in John Kenyon, Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland (London, 1958)
and John Miller, James II (Hove, 1978). John Miller has also provided a fine case-study of how royal policy evolved towards Ireland under this monarch, in ‘The Earl of Tyrconnel and James II’s Irish Policy 1685–1688’, HJ xx (1977) 803–23.
Otherwise, a student must piece together different studies made of themes in, or portions of, the period in one or other of the countries. J. G. Simms, Jacobite Ireland 1685–91 (London, 1969) provides a useful overview of the island’s experiences under James.
The remodelling of its military forces is examined in John Childs, The Army, James II and the Glorious Revolution (Manchester, 1980), chapter 3.
The same period is treated again by James McGuire, ‘James II and Ireland’, in W. A. Maguire (ed.), Kings in Conflict (Belfast, 1990), chapter 2.
An aspect of the land settlement and of the interplay between Irish and court politics is well investigated in Jane H. Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms (Cambridge, 1993).
Other useful monographs covering different issues within the broad range of the subject are C. E. Pike, ‘The Intrigue to Deprive the Earl of Essex of the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland’, TRHS, 3rd ser. v (1911) 95–103;
J. I. McGuire, ‘The Dublin Convention, the Protestant Community and the Emergence of an Ecclesiastical Settlement in 1660’, in Art Cosgrove and J. I. McGuire (eds), Parliament and Community (Belfast, 1983), pp. 121–46;
and Celestine Murphy, ‘The Wexford Catholic Community in the Later Seventeenth Century’, in R. V. Comerford, Mary Cullen, Jacqueline Hill and Colm Lennon (eds), Religion, Conflict and Coexistence in Ireland: Essays Presented to Monsignor Patrick J. Corish (Dublin, 1990), chapter 4.
In Scotland the making of ecclesiastical policy during two-thirds of the period is covered by Julia Buckroyd in her general survey Church and State in Scotland 1660–1681 (Edinburgh, 1981), and her biography of its principal churchman, The Life of James Sharp (Edinburgh, 1987). The victims are portrayed in Ian B. Cowan, The Scottish Covenanters (London, 1976),
and their ideology in I. M. Smart, ‘The Political Ideas of the Scottish Covenanters 1638–88’, History of Political Thought, i (1980) 167–93,
and T. Brotherstone (ed.), Covenant, Charter and Party (Aberdeen, 1989), pp. 25–49.
Allan I. Macinnes, ‘Repression and Conciliation: The Highland Dimension 1660–1688’, Scottish Historical Review, lxv (1986) 167–95,
takes a much-needed look at the northern half of the country, while issues in its central politics are treated by John Patrick, ‘The Origins of the Opposition to Lauderdale’, Scottish Historical Review, liii (1974) 1–21,
and Bruce P. Lenman, ‘The Scottish Nobility and the Revolution of 1688–90’, in Robert Beddard (ed.), The Revolutions of 1688 (Oxford, 1991), chapter 3.
Finally, a contribution to the economic history of the time is made by Eric J. Graham, ‘In Defence of the Scottish Maritime Interest, 1681–1713’, Scottish Historical Review, lxxi (1992) 88–109.
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© 1997 R. Hutton
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Hutton, R. (1997). The Triple-crowned Islands. In: Glassey, L.K.J. (eds) The Reigns of Charles II and James VII & II. Problems in Focus Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25432-3_4
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