ABSTRACT
Historians of seventeenth-century England, while investigating the Stewarts' composite monarchy, have recently stumbled on Scotland and Ireland. Sorties into seventeenth-century Scotland and Ireland, valued in proportion as they unravel the 'British problem', perpetuate a patronizing anglocentrism. More surprisingly, although historians argue about the intentions of Charles II and James VII and II, whether simply for greater authority, arbitrariness or absolutism - the evidence of their activities in the two smaller kingdoms has been enlisted only intermittently. The formal unionism of the Interregnum had been discredited by what were taken to be its inevitable adjuncts: occupying armies and high taxes. In 1661 Scotland and Ireland regained their own parliaments. Nevertheless, the financial argument, that a properly governed Ireland could assist the king in England and Scotland, was frequently advanced by those such as Tyrconnell who sought to capture Irish policy. In 1687 Tyrconnell, the sorcerer who would conjure so much from his catholic countrymen was entrusted with the Irish government.
