Proclamation issued at Finglas, 7 July 1690

To all the people of our kingdom of Ireland, whom it may concern William R.

As it hath pleased almighty God to bless our arms in this kingdom, with a late victory over our enemies at the Boyne, and with the possession of our capital city of Dublin, and with a general dispersion of all that did oppose us: we are now in so happy a prospect of our affairs, and of extinguishing the rebellion of this kingdom: that we hold it reasonable to think of mercy, and to have compassion upon those whom we judged to have been seduced. Wherefore we do hereby declare, we shall take into our royal protection all poor labourers, common soldiers, country farmers, ploughmen and cottiers whatsoever, as also all citizens, townsmen, tradesmen, and artificers who either remained at home, or having fled from their dwellings, shall by the first day of August next repair to their usual places of abode; surrendering up what arms they have, to such justices of the peace as are, or shall be appointed by us, not only to receive the same, but also to register the appearance of such of the said persons as shall come and submit unto our authority. For our royal intention is, and we do hereby declare, that we will not only pardon all those poor seduced people as to their lives and liberties, who shall come in by the time aforesaid, for all violences they have done or committed by the command of their leaders during the war; but we do also promise to secure them in their goods, their stocks of cattle, and all their chattels personal whatsoever; willing and requiring them to coming in, and where they were tenants, there to preserve the harvest of grass and corn for the supply of winter.

From September 1698 until his death in 1711, the bulk of John Browne's time was occupied by the sale of his estate and the process of clearing his debts. A second act of parliament to regulate the sale of the Browne estate was found to be necessary as early as 1697. The first two sections of this chapter examine several attempts to have this second act passed by the Irish parliament in 1698 and again during the session of 1703–4, before eventual success in 1705. Even that was not the final word on the matter, with a third act sought in 1709. The efforts of 1698 were important as they marked the first time that Browne was not actively involved in seeking the acts, which threatened to take away whatever control he still retained of his affairs. Browne fought hard against such a scenario, occasionally making a personal appearance in Dublin, though more usually relying on his eldest son, Peter, and various agents to protect his interests in Dublin and in London. Section III traces the sale of the Browne estate between 1698 and 1708, and payments made to creditors in the same period. By the time the process had concluded, almost nothing of Browne's once vast estate remained in his possession. Peter Browne became increasingly important in this process as the seventeenth century drew to a close. Peter's ambitions in life were subordinated to his family obligations as heir to the estate – or what little would remain once his father's debts were paid. Perhaps the greatest challenge facing Peter was the daunting prospect of rebuilding his family's landed interest and fortune. That work was undertaken as the sale of the estate progressed. Several purchasers of the estate clearly acted in concert with the Brownes, allowing Peter to immediately take out favourable leases as he sought to resurrect his family's fortunes.

A combination of factors had prevented Browne and his creditors securing a second act for the sale of the estate in 1697. For his creditors, a second act was desirable to speed up the sale process, which had not begun by the end of the year. For Browne, a second act was imperative to renew his freedom from arrest for debt, which expired on 1 November 1697.

John Browne of Westport, County Mayo, was the quintessential representative of the Catholic ‘new interest’. Called to the Irish bar in 1669, he was a self-made man. As one of the greatest beneficiaries of the upheaval caused by the Restoration land settlement, between 1666 and 1685 Browne accrued an enormous estate in Galway and Mayo of more than 155,000 acres (with over 39,000 acres classed as profitable), as well as property in Counties Sligo, Roscommon, Clare and Dublin. He was an ambitious man who used family connections to great advantage. Married to a daughter of the 3rd Viscount Mayo, Browne was also linked by his siblings’ marriages to several prominent families, both Catholic and Protestant, including the Dillons of Roscommon, the Malones of Westmeath, the Binghams of Mayo and the Talbots of Dublin. At least one of his nephews, George Browne, was commissioned in the regiment John raised for James II in 1689. Two other nephews were prominent lawyers: Garrett Dillon in the reign of James II, and Edmund Malone from the 1680s until the 1720s. Both were intimately acquainted with Browne's financial affairs – Dillon became a business partner with his uncle in the 1680s, while Malone proved an important lobbyist for Browne and others in Dublin and London during the 1690s and beyond.

During the Williamite war Browne established himself as one of the most important Irish Jacobites and acted as a negotiator and signatory of the articles of Limerick. He used this position to secure a controversial article, which ensured that liability for his personal debts – at least £30,000, incurred before the outbreak of the war and owed mostly to Irish Protestants – was not to be borne by him alone, but shared with all Catholics who retained their land under the various articles of surrender. Nonetheless, the settlement of these debts eventually stripped Browne of almost his entire estate, a process that took more than two decades and was still not complete at the time of his death.

This chapter surveys Browne's rise to prominence as a landowner and lawyer, and his attempts to establish himself as an ironmaster. As with many of his ‘new interest’ contemporaries, Browne's training at the inns of court in London equipped him to explore opportunities for investment in land.

The trajectory of John Browne's career, between the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 and the death of William III in 1702, mirrored that of the wider Catholic ‘new interest’. None of his contemporaries were, however, able to match Browne's extreme levels of success and failure. Between 1666 and 1680 Browne created an enormous estate in the west of Ireland, consisting of more than 155,000 acres. Not content with this accomplishment, he also set out to establish himself as an ironmaster, rapidly accumulating debts as he sought to build a profitable business. This was to prove his undoing. Heavily indebted by the mid-1680s, Browne never again enjoyed a period of financial stability. Given time he may have been able to recover his position, but James II's reign introduced a period of instability in the three kingdoms that culminated with William of Orange's invasion of England in November 1688. Browne's subsequent support for the Jacobite cause was as wholehearted as any, though the underlying motive is clear. In the event of a Jacobite victory, James II would have written off at least a portion of those debts in payment for Browne's services. Trusting in this eventuality, and on the acquisition of a new estate from forfeited Protestant lands, Browne did not join with other prominent ‘new interest’ landowners who actively assisted the Williamites during the war. His loyalty ensured a place at the negotiating table in 1691 as a representative of the Jacobites, and offered an opportunity that Browne gladly took. The resulting articles of surrender set the course of the remainder of his life.

Article 13 of Limerick ensured that Browne was unique among the articlemen. The article itself was exceptional in that the legislative and executive branches of government made repeated attempts to ensure its implementation and to secure parliamentary ratification, beginning with the very first parliament of the post-war era. On their side too, the motive is clear – the vast majority of the beneficiaries of article 13 were Protestant and many were members of parliament or officeholders. Beyond the confines of his immediate family, it is difficult to know how Browne was regarded by Catholics in Connacht, or indeed the rest of Ireland. His sons-in-law clearly looked to him for advice and counsel, even if relations with both were occasionally strained.

It is difficult to gauge the overall effect of article 13 of Limerick, and the prolonged sale of the estate, on John Browne's family and on the wider Connacht community. From 1698 Browne's eldest son Peter became increasingly involved in the management of the family's debts. Browne's four other children (Valentine, Bridget, Elizabeth and Mary) were largely peripheral figures in this business, though the marriages of two of his three daughters and their consequent dowries placed him under further financial burdens and brought Browne into conflict with their husbands. As Browne's most important legal representative in the 1690s and 1700s, Edmund Malone played a prominent role in the management of his affairs, including disputes with Lord Athenry and Viscount Mayo, Browne's sons-in-law. In Dublin, Luke Hussey's diligence was important to the management of Browne's business. This chapter examines the impact of John Browne's debts on the lives of his children, as well as the agency of his nephew Edmund Malone on behalf of several Catholic and Protestant families in Counties Galway and Mayo. The first section analyses Malone's work in London as he managed the affairs of the Brownes of the Neale, the Blakes of Moyne, County Galway, and the Veseys of County Galway, as well as Malone's occasionally tense relationship with his uncle. The lives of Browne's children are discussed in section II, through the prism of their relationship with their father. Though Peter Browne's correspondence is relatively well preserved among the Westport papers, the same cannot be said of Valentine Browne and his three sisters. Section III examines the conversion to Protestantism of two of John Browne's grandsons: Francis Bermingham, future Baron Athenry, and Peter Browne's son, John Browne, future earl of Altamont. Francis Bermingham's conversion in particular allows an insight into the pressure brought to bear on the Catholic gentry of Ireland by the penal laws.

The main branch of the Browne family remained at the Neale after the death of Colonel John Browne's father in 1670, with the estate inherited by George Browne, the eldest son. Like his father and several of his direct descendants, George Browne never assumed the baronetcy bestowed on the family in 1636 – that title was not assumed until 1762, by George Browne's great–grandson (also named George) whose brother John was in turn elevated to the peerage as Baron Kilmaine (second creation) in 1789.

The 1689 parliament and its legislative achievements represented the high point of the brief Catholic resurgence of James II's reign. The time and space necessary to implement the new Catholic polity's programme of reform could only be afforded by the restoration of James II to the throne. Following William and Mary's coronation in London as king and queen of England, Scotland and Ireland in April 1689, it became increasingly clear that an invasion of Ireland was imminent. Much to the frustration of Irish Protestants sheltering in England, preparations for that invasion took longer than anticipated and it was not until August 1689 that Williamite forces landed at Bangor Bay, under the command of the duke of Schomberg. The war of the two kings had commenced, and the future of the Catholic counter-revolution hung in the balance.

This chapter provides a fresh analysis of the Jacobite war effort up to and including the negotiation of the articles of Limerick, the terms of surrender signed in October 1691 that brought the war to an end. As the owner of substantial ironworks in the west of Ireland, John Browne became increasingly important as a supplier of raw iron, tools and weaponry to the Jacobite army. Though relations between the Jacobite administration and Browne were strained throughout 1690, his importance to the war effort and his legal expertise led to his inclusion in the commission appointed to negotiate a Jacobite surrender in September 1691. Conscious of his still dire financial position, Browne took full advantage of the negotiations to spread liability for his personal debts to every Catholic landowner in Ireland.

Irish Jacobite preparations for a possible invasion from England began in earnest in December 1688, when Tyrconnell issued commissions for raising 50,000 men. Tyrconnell's aims were overly ambitious on several fronts, not least of which was the near impossibility of moulding such a large body of inexperienced men, for the most part commanded by wholly unqualified officers, into a functioning, disciplined army. Realising the logistical challenges that his actions had presented, Tyrconnell sought to reduce the Jacobite army to more manageable proportions throughout the first months of 1689, causing friction with the newly commissioned officers.

This book is a study of Irish Catholic landownership and political lobbying, from the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the reign of Queen Anne. The fortunes of Irish Catholics fluctuated dramatically during this period, from the generally benevolent tolerance of Charles II's reign, through the heady days of the Catholic resurgence under James II, on to the beginnings of the penal era after 1691. Divided into three parts, the primary focus is on the rise of the ‘new interest’ of propertied Catholics after the Restoration, the Jacobite administration during the Williamite war (1689–91), the negotiation of the various articles of surrender that ended the war, and on the protracted and contested progress towards the implementation of these articles in the two decades that followed.

Part I provides an overview of the life and career of Colonel John Browne, an Irish Catholic who built one of the largest estates in Ireland in the 1660s and 1670s, as well as the impact of James II's reign on Catholic landowners. Lobbying by Irish Catholics, in Dublin and in London, provides the core focus for Parts II and III. Part II explores the drafting and aftermath of the various articles of surrender, signed during the Williamite war at Drogheda, Waterford, Galway, Inis Boffin, Sligo and Limerick. Those who claimed the benefit of the articles were known as the articlemen. Their political activity during the 1690s and early 1700s concentrated on ensuring that the Irish and English governments honoured the terms of the articles. Part III analyses the implementation and impact of article 13 of Limerick, an extraordinary and disputed addition to the terms that called for a special levy on all Catholicowned estates to help pay debts owed by John Browne. Article 13 was unique in a number of respects, and it proved to be the only article for which the Irish parliament actively sought to enact legislation. Though the aim of the Jacobite negotiators at Limerick was to safeguard the economic future of Irish Catholics, article 13 was financially punitive to the articlemen and they made strenuous efforts to prevent the collection of the special levy.