ABSTRACT
The public identity of the English of Ireland had acquired a historical aspect, as they sought to explain to others, and perhaps to themselves, who they were, and how they had come to be where they were. As government and hence English institutions reached out, segments of society fed upon them. If one result of the development of royal government was to nurture a larger, more self-consciously English, political establishment in the lordship, another was to draw a firmer line between the English and the Irish. Law in Ireland, while it embodied an English identity and served as a vehicle for its preservation, also, as in colonial America, reflected the particularity of the local experience. Upon inspection categories blur, solidarities fragment, horizons contract within local or sectional bounds, or expand far beyond the habitat of the English of Ireland.
