History: In writing A New Anatomy of Ireland, Toby Barnard has forsaken the highways of Irish history and strolled down the byways instead.
Based on research in the archives of many individual families, parish and guild records, contemporary tracts and newspapers, he has unearthed a goldmine of observations, statistics, and minutiae. Mining these deposits, he has fashioned a text that is elegant, amusing, engaging, and exceedingly informative. In his preface, he refers to his work as a "sketch" (I would call it a highly-worked canvas) not of "the processes by which Protestants ensconced themselves but of the results".
This is the story of the Protestant way in late 17th- and 18th-century Ireland. Barnard's title pays homage to Sir William Petty's Political Anatomy of Ireland of 1691, which attempted to quantify the population and resources of the country "in number, weight, and measure". But, writes Barnard, Petty was "disappointingly incurious about structures". Barnard, by contrast, is incurious about nothing.
There were about 400,000 Protestants in Ireland by the mid-18th century, of which only about 20,000 were "recordable" in that they were either freeholders of land or freemen in the towns. That leaves about 380,000 plain Protestants and it is largely this body of souls that Barnard attempts to catalogue.
He divides them up into nine categories: 'Peers' (the shortest chapter), 'The Quality', 'Clergy', 'Professions', 'Office-holders', 'Soldiers and Sailors', 'Agents', 'The Middle Station' and 'The Lower People'. It will be seen, therefore, that, contrary to popular impression, Protestants existed at every level of Irish society.
'The Quality' cause most difficulty (more than, say, clergy or doctors) when it comes to definition, and this was also the dilemma for aspirants of the time: "Applicants for admission to the Quality asked in vain for the requirements." Income might be a guide and, by the middle of the 18th century, £1,000 to £2,000 a year could guarantee the recipient a certain gentility; but other factors - lineage, public office, land, education, dress, and behaviour (reticence rather than ostentation was required) - were also taken into account.
Money, then as now, was a consideration for all. In the 1730s, it took about £400 to train as a clergyman, but the annual stipend for a reasonable living was as low as £60. By contrast, the expense of becoming a barrister might be as much as £1,500, although an attorney might qualify for only 100 guineas. The cost of purchasing a commission in the army in the 1720s ranged from an astonishing £9,000 for a colonelcy of dragoons to £170 for an ensigncy in a foot regiment, but then these commissions could later be sold on and the investment recouped.
At the other end of the scale, an apprenticeship for a trade amounted to about £4 to £5. The chapter on 'Offices and Office-holders' prompts comparison with the Ireland of today. An unexpected inspection in 1725 of the books of the deputy vice-treasurer of the exchequer, John Pratt, uncovered a deficiency of £75,000 and further investigation revealed that Pratt supported his extravagant lifestyle not with the fortune of his heiress wife (as had been believed), but by speculating with State funds.
Barnard brings a firmament of characters to life. Appropriately, a Thomas Vice was employed by the parish of St Michan to prosecute brothels. Brettridge Badham, a dishonest MP, also lived up to his name. The Flowers at Castledurrow had a valued servant in Cupid Gallop and rewarded her accordingly at £10 a year. Although aspiring to gentility, a Dublin curate, Valentine Needham, "lolled at his reading desk, fiddled with his wig, pared his nails, and stretched out his hands to display a ring". A female servant in Kinsale in the 1680s was "locked into a shed, forced to sit on hens' eggs, and fed with bran until the chicks hatched".
Barnard writes felicitously and with wit, and it is a triumph to have converted what must be a very extensive card-index (his initial research must pre-date the database) into a text of such fluidity and coherence. His scholarship is lightly borne, his footnotes extensive but clear. Many a phrase delights, such as: "The Povey sisters hugged the tatters of their gentility tightly to warm them against the chill of indigence."
And then there is the language. The word "confession" is used throughout when another writer might have been content with "faith" or "religion", and there are other examples of usage which tend towards the archaic ("commensality", "clerisy") but which flavour the text appropriately. "Fissiparous", "jactitation", "shrievalty" and "prosopography" had me reaching for the dictionary, although some unfamiliar offices such as "alnager" and "hanaper" are helpfully explained. I have never described anyone as a "malapert", even though I believe I may have known quite a few.
Barnard promises another volume, which, as an extension to this, will "probe the minds, values and material worlds" of Protestants. Such a study will be eagerly awaited.
Homan Potterton's memoir of growing up in the 1950s, Rathcormick, will be published in paperback by Vintage next spring
A New Anatomy of Ireland: the Irish Protestants 1649-1770 By Toby Barnard Yale University Press, 489pp, £25