The first expansive study of how when the Popish Plot of 1678 came to light, fears of an Irish Catholic rebellion amongst Ireland's uneasy Protestant elite, who dominated over the Catholic majority population, were manipulated in England in an attempt to block the Catholic Duke of York from succeeding to the throne.

JOHN GIBNEY is a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies, NUI Galway. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, he was formerly an NEH Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA.

Preface Ackowledgements and Conventions Abbreviations Introduction Restoration Ireland: Structural Problems and Structural Prejudice The Popish Plot in Ireland, September 1678-May 1679 Institutions and the 'Irish Plot', May 1679-November 1680 Irish evidence, November 1680 The Decline of the Irish Plot and the Road to the 'Tory revenge', November 1680-July 1681 Conclusion Aftermath, 1681-91 Notes