The Quaker Lobby and its Influence on Irish Legislation, 1692–1705

largely unexamined. The year 1692 opened a phase of Irish parliamentary history characterised by frequent sessions and an unprecedented scale of legislative activity affecting many interests. Poynings' Law dictated a convoluted procedure that brought proposed Irish legislation, not only before the two houses of the Irish parliament, but also before the privy councils of Ireland and England. The attempts to reshape Irish bills being reviewed in London by English commercial interests' and Irish Catholics and their friends2 have received some attention. The evidence for lobbying at the parliament and privy council in Dublin from the 1690s onwards remains however to be investigated.' This article is based largely on materials in the Historical Library of the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland (in Dublin and I am very grateful to the Library's Curator and her colleagues for the assistance and courtesy they have afforded me during my researches. I am currently, by permission of the Historical Committee of the Society of Friends, preparing an edition of the minute-book of the Quaker lobbying committee, for publication by the Irish Manuscripts Commission. I am indebted to Charles Ivar McGrath and James McGuire for commenting on earlier versions of this article, in turn based on a paper read before the Early Modern Ireland and