From Patriots to Unionists

This is the first full-length study of the Protestant middle-class Patriots of Dublin, who, in the eighteenth-century, made up the largest concentration of Protestants in Ireland (c.70,000). Freemen of the guilds alone - who were entitled to a parliamentary vote - were almost as numerous as the entire landed class. The slow and difficult progress of these merchants, master craftsmen, and shopkeepers, from Patriotism in the eighteenth century to a Unionist position in the nineteenth, throws light on all subsequent Irish history, and fills an important gap in the historiography of Unionism.