William King,Sir William Petty,and Post-War Ireland (1690-92): Sir Robert Southwell and the Printing of Political Discourse

摘要

THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES THE PRODUCTION of printed political discourse in Ireland and London following the defeat of James II's Irish campaign in 1691. Post-war uncertainties over the nature of the settlement for Ireland in church and state, but also for individual property and interests, generated anxious and often hostile exchanges that have stimulated significant scholarly debate in recent years. Matters of Protestant Anglo-Irish identity formation, the nature of the relationship between the two kingdoms-particularly the idea of union-and the contentious issues of allegiance and passive obedience around the change of monarch, all formed part of the post-war political landscape.1 The idea of union especially (in which there is still something at stake for the historiography of Ireland) and the assumptions made about the nature and extent of unionist sentiment expressed in relation to Ireland post-1691, have come under recent pressure. David Hayton has done much to clarify this field of argument, pointing out that, What has been missing from much of the discussion of these texts [that advocate union] has been an exposition of context. The actual weight attached to union by those who raised the issue; the degree to which such would-be opinion-formers were, or were not, representative of the Irish 'political nation'; above all, whether a handful of pamphlets, several parliamentary addresses, and the occasional flourish in private correspondence, can properly be said to constitute a discourse.