What was life like for Irish Protestants between the mid-seventeenth and the late-eighteenth centuries? In an account filled with entertaining episodes and memorable characters, Toby Barnard scrutinizes social attitudes and structures in every segment of Protestant society during this period and also reassesses Ireland's place in the British state and empire. "Toby Barnard, unparalleled excavator of Irish social history in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, has published the first volume of his magnum opus investigating the origins of this vanishing world, demonstrating its vitality, quirks and variations as never before, and decisively releasing Irish Protestants from the stereotype of the Big House. The richness of this survey lies in the people profiled, through a lifetime of sifting in provincial record offices and family archives as well as more mainstream material."-Ray Foster, Financial Times Magazine