ABSTRACT
The tripartite ethnicity of New English, Gael and Old English discussed earlier was no more. The latter two markers had been subsumed in an inclusive Irishness. 1 The 'New English' of the early decades of the century, or the 'Old Protestants' of the 1650s, had displayed cohesiveness and unity of purpose at critical junctures that overrode differences of theology or church organisation. Nearly a half century later this protestant community was bigger than ever and growing by the day. It probably comprised about a fifth of the population in the latter years of Charles II, rising to about 27 per cent by 1715. 2 A countrywide statistical survey commissioned by the Irish parliament showed (map 9) in 1732 that protestants dominated five Ulster counties and the capital. 3 Dublin was a city of protestants, with their numbers growing from about 51,000 in 1695 to about 75,000 in 1733 to outnumber Catholics by almost two to one. 4 Yet that community had sundered and a new tripartite religious (and arguably ethnic) division had emerged of (English) Protestant, (Irish) Catholic and (Scottish) non-conformist. This chapter largely concerns a Protestant minority within a protestant minority: members of the Church of Ireland.
