Personal financial management in early eighteenth-century Ireland: practices, participants and outcomes

Abstract

This thesis examines the modalities, practices, and options available to, the attitudes towards, and the potential results achievable by personal financial managers in Ireland in the early decades of the eighteenth century.The research conducted consisted of two major projects. The first project was the extraction from the files of the Registry of Deeds (ROD) of the details of the first 200 ?Satisfyed and discharged? mortgages recorded in the ROD and also a review of all transactions that were registered in the ROD in the years 1710 and 1730. In this period the quantum of deeds registered more than doubled. The second research project was a detailed case study of the financial management practices of Dean Jonathan Swift. Within these two core projects there was a particular focus on analysing the legal and financial issues surrounding the use of, and the prevalence of, the secured person-to-person mortgage by financial mangers in Ireland in this period.