A book of a year is no novelty. 1641, 1688, 1798, 1800, 1916, 1922: Irish history is punctuated by resonant dates. All have attracted their recent analysts. Some have generated heritage centres; others, films. But, hitherto, 1660 has not. This, the moment at which that agile lecher, Charles II, returned from exile on the continent, had limited impact in Ireland. True, the king had expressed sympathy for what the defeated and dispossessed of Ireland had suffered in the royal cause. His restoration to his three thrones certainly raised hopes in Catholic Ireland. But, merry monarch as he was to English cavaliers, his behaviour excited less mirth among his Irish subjects.
Despite this absence of an obvious Irish dimension, the confused months from May 1659 to May 1660 which preceded Charles's restoration are Professor Aidan Clarke's subject. Those who admire him as the most astringent, laconic and acute analyst of 17th-century Ireland may be surprised at his choice of such an apparently esoteric topic. Not for him to range excitedly across the centuries; instead he investigates a single year. He reasons that this was when the embryonic Protestant ascendancy can first be seen in action.
Authority disintegrated after Oliver Cromwell died. The English government in Ireland could scarcely control the capital, let alone its hinterlands. Plotters seized Dublin Castle. An assembly was hastily convened to Dublin. It re-established a rudimentary administration.
Meanwhile, its members synchronised their actions with Edinburgh and London, and positioned themselves to benefit from whatever happened next.
In the event, it was Charles's return. The Dublin gathering, composed entirely of Protestants, was the first occasion when those who had emerged as the owners and local rulers of the island during the previous decade acted as a collective. Much of this study is an exact anatomy of the leaders of Protestant Ireland. These settlers had arrived in Ireland at different times and varied widely in attitudes. Their disunity prefigured that of their 18th-century descendants. In their unedifying scramble for self-preservation and self-promotion, they displayed traits that transcend not just confession, but time and place. All this is narrated dispassionately by a consummate master. Professor Clarke has confounded sceptics by wresting from the unpromising 1660 a vintage which can be savoured by connoisseurs and novices alike.
Toby Barnard is a fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. His BI]Cromwellian Ireland (1975) will be reissued in paperback by OUP later in the spring.