The Restoration Land Settlement in County Dublin, 1661-88

The Restoration land settlement in Ireland was one of the most significant events in the remarkable revolution in land ownership in the early modern period whereby the ownership of most of the land was transferred from Catholic to Protestant hands, and with it political and economic power. The settlement was regulated by two acts of parliament, the one familiarly known as the Act of Settlement (1662), the other the Act of Explanation (1665), both of which became the principal legal instruments upon which land tenure in Ireland was to rest for nearly two centuries. Yet the settlement has hitherto attracted the attention of relatively few historians, with the result that the subject has remained largely a blind-spot to many historians dealing with seventeenth-century Ireland. In this study Dr L. J. Arnold has attempted to resolve the uncertainties surrounding the settlement, using County Dublin as a case study.