By the beginning of the eighteenth century, most Englishmen believed that over the previous two hundred years England had acquired an empire. By this they meant that English men (although a few mentioned women and children) had established colonies first in Ireland and then across the Atlantic world and that a process of social and economic convergence, which would be termed ‘Anglicisation’ by later historians, was well under way. They gave rather less attention to the mechanics which underlay this development and in particular to what happened when English models of authority, so delicately negotiated at home, were transplanted abroad. The more perceptive among the commentators noted that despite apparent social and economic convergence there were significant differences in the structures of order in the diverse parts of the ‘empire’. In particular, Ireland, close to home and with a long history of close contact with England, seemed to be strongly at variance with English norms of order despite almost two centuries of attempts to transplant English ideas of authority there. In the 1680s the earl of Anglesea, attempting to write a history of Ireland, drew attention to the divergent norms of order across the wide sphere of English influence.