A Star Chamber Court in Ireland

The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571–1641

Jon G. Crawford

‘A meticulous account of the Court of Castle Chamber … perhaps the finest survey of the English legal establishment in Elizabethan and Stuart Ireland', Gerald Power, Breifne.

‘This is a richly detailed and comprehensive study of an important organ of Irish government ... It provides a fascinating lens through which to view political and social developments in an era marked by the expansion of English law across Ireland. The inclusion of four appendices, totalling over 160 pages … represents a major resource for historians of social and religious history … This book is an indispensable contribution to our understanding of early modern Ireland', Brian Mac Cuarta, Seancas Ard Maca.

‘This lengthy well-produced and thoughtfully illustrated book offers a definitive account of the Court of Castle Chamber …This volume has much to offer those interested in legal history ... [A] very important book', Jane Ohlmeyer, Irish Historical Studies.

‘Professor Crawford is to be congratulated for a magnificent study which is magisterially impartial in its judgments and which opens up for us a vista of Ireland too little surveyed even by those most directly concerned with the subject and the period in question’, Gerald Bray, Sixteenth Century Journal.

‘… Likely to remain for a very long time the only extensive treatment of its subject … It will be an essential work of reference for all historians of early modern Ireland', Victor Treadwell, Oxford, EHR (September 2007).

‘Each part [of the text] makes its own distinctive contribution to our understanding of Irish legal history in the early modern period. What is particularly important about the first part is the emphasis on the importance of law in the changing structure of Irish society in this period … This book is not only a major contribution to Irish legal history but to the understanding of early modern Ireland as a whole. This book does for Ireland what Sir Geoffrey Elton did for the Star Chamber in England: it restores the court to its rightful place as a central institution … [I]t will repay careful study by anyone interested in almost any aspect of early modern Irish history’, Raymond Gillespie, Irish Jurist (2005).