A Rage Without a Home: toryism in Restoration Ireland

Abstract

The present work is a study of toryism and rappareeism, especially with regards to their place in public discourse, between the years 1660 and 1695, encompassing Restoration Ireland, the War of the Two Kings and the initial years of the Williamite dispensation.

Beginning with an overview of relevant historiography and an historical introduction, the study proceeds to analyse the toryism of the 1660s in the context of early Restoration politics, with particular reference to the crisis years of 1666-7. Chapter two reviews the progress of toryism in the second decade of the Restoration with special concern for counterinsurgency tactics and the strategies of state-building deployed by a succession of Stuart viceroys. Chapter three deals with the role of literary texts in setting the tone of late Restoration toryism, using the lens of one text in particular. Chapter four spans the reign of James II as well as the War of the Two Kings and traces the history of toryism as it became increasingly radicalised to the point that it earned a new title, that of rappareeism.

The study analyses toryism in its historically contingency, while exposing the subject to the theory and methodologies developed in the study of cognate modalities of dissent, especially banditry and forms of insurgency. The work concludes by noting the significant shift in counterinsurgency practice from that influenced by Stuart royalist ideology to that of Protestant constitutionalism at the beginning of the long eighteenth century.