Ireland Under the Stuarts and During the Interregnum, Volume 3

This final volume of Bagwell's monumental three-part history chronicles Ireland's turbulent decade following the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. The narrative examines the frantic scramble for land, power, and survival that gripped all of Ireland's competing factions: the returning Catholic gentry seeking restitution, the Cromwellian settlers now facing dispossession, the English administration attempting to impose order, and the mercantile classes profiting from chaos. Bagwell provides meticulous detail on the Act of Settlement of 1662, the near-rebellion of 1663, and the relentless factional warfare at the royal court where Irish affairs were debated and decided. The work draws extensively from parliamentary journals, state papers, and contemporary correspondence to reconstruct a society in perpetual negotiation with its own survival. What emerges is not the orderly restoration often described in English histories, but a dangerous, uncertain decade where old grievances festered and new ones crystallized. Bagwell leaves the narrative at the precipice of 1688, providing essential context for the cataclysm that would follow.