The case of Ireland in context: William Molyneux and his critics

William Molyneux’s Case of Ireland (1698) is widely regarded as the most important work of Irish political thought published during the long eighteenth century. Over the last 40 years Patrick Kelly has analysed its arguments and patiently reconstructed the wider Anglo-Irish controversy of the late 1690s in a series of illuminating articles. But in the wider historiography, anachronistic readings of Molyneux still persist, focused on his alleged contributions to evolving ideas of Irish nationhood. We can make better sense of the various strategies Molyneux adopted by situating him within the debates over the ancient constitution that took place in late seventeenth-century England. A careful reading of the hostile responses to Molyneux also reveals that the Case of Ireland prompted the first attempt by English constitutional writers to conceptualise their empire as a single power structure. Contextualising Molyneux in this way prompts further methodological questions concerning the indifference among most Irish scholars to the ‘Cambridge school’ of intellectual history