Biographical studies of the two Dukes of Ormonde illuminate aspects of the operation of political power in seventeenth-century Ireland, and, on a wider European stage, the predicaments facing the nobility. A valuable insight into the political and material world of Ireland's leading aristocratic family. HISTORY For much of their lives the two dukes of Ormonde dominated public events in Ireland, where they served the English sovereign as viceroy five times; they were also powerful presences in the Stuart court in England, and commanded armies both in Ireland and Europe. Later, they spent long periods on the continent as travellers and exiles. Yetdespite their importance in the public life of the age, neither duke has been the subject of a full modern biography, a gap which this collection of essays aims to fill, using key episodes and phases in the Ormondes' careers to investigate the larger picture. The dukes' lives as great nobles, landowners and converts to Protestantism raise problems specific to Ireland, but they also exemplify the predicament of nobles elsewhere in Europe. A particular focusis on the worlds that they and their wives created, often innovative and always dazzling, and on the clienteles who looked to them for preferment and on which a part of the Ormondes' political weight rested. Throughout, much newlight is cast on such vexed questions as the troubled and constantly changing relationship between Ireland and England, between public and private interests, and the roles of women. Dr TOBY BARNARD teaches at the University of Oxford. Contributors: G.E. AYLMER, T.C. BARNARD, EVELINE CRUICKSHANKS, DAVID EDWARDS, JANE FENLON, RAYMOND GILLESPIE, DAVID HAYTON, PATRICK LITTLE, RENE MOULINAS, EAMONN - CIARDHA, NATHALIE GENET ROUFFIAC

In recent years Jacobitism has become a subject of growing interst to historians amid academic controversy over various aspects of the subject. The least-known phase of Jacobitism, although in many ways the most important, is the period 1689 to 1718, when the Stuart court in exile was at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the residence of the kings of France until Louis XIV built Versailles. This collection of essays illuminates the early development of Jacobitism, placing the movement in a coherent historical context. The volume includes an introduction by Edward Corp on the Stuart court and an essay by Eveline Cruickshanks on the importance of Jacobitism in Britain and its links with the exiled court. Other essays discuss Jacobite ideology and the Jacobite press; the internal workings and external relations of the exiled court; the abortive invasion of England in 1692; and Jacobite exiles - comparable in numbers and influence to the Hugeunots in England - in France.

The aim of this book is to set the Glorious Revolution in its religious, political and diplomatic background and examine its consequences for Britain and Europe. Cruickshanks discusses the problems of the reign of James II that led to the invasion of William of Orange in November 1688. The book summarises and interprets the best in the many collections of essays published for the Tercentenary of the Glorious Revolution, as well as works published since. The Whig interpretation of history, the impact of the Revolution on Scotland and Ireland, and conventional wisdom on the constitutional settlement and the Financial Revolution are all reviewed in a new light.