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³ O'Brien, Patrick, ‘The political economy of British taxation, 1660–1815’, Economic History Review, 41 (1988), pp. 1–32Google Scholar; Stone, Lawrence, ed., An imperial state at war: Britain from 1689–1815 (London, 1994)Google Scholar; Bowen, H. V., War and British society, 1688–1815 (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar; Brewer, John and Helmuth, Eckhart, eds., Rethinking Leviathan: the eighteenth-century state in Britain and Germany (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar; Storrs, Christopher, ed., The fiscal-military state in eighteenth-century Europe: essays in honour of P. G. M. Dickson (Farnham, 2009)Google Scholar; and Yn-Casalilla, Bartolomé and O'Brien, Patrick K.with Francisco Comín Comín, eds., The rise of fiscal states: a global history, 1500–1914 (Cambridge, 2012)Google Scholar.

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⁵ Bartlett, Thomas, ‘Viscount Townshend and the Irish revenue board, 1767–1773’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C, 79 (1979), pp. 153–75Google Scholar; Bartlett, Thomas, ‘The augmentation of the army in Ireland, 1767–1769’, English Historical Review, 96 (1981), pp. 540–59Google Scholar; and McGrath, Ireland and empire, pp. 133–42.

⁶ See, amongst other works, Canny, Nicholas, Kingdom and colony: Ireland in the Atlantic world (Baltimore, MD, 1988)Google Scholar; Connolly, S. J., Religion, law and power: the making of Protestant Ireland, 1660–1760 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 103–43Google Scholar; Connolly, S. J., ‘Eighteenth-century Ireland, colony or ancien regime’, in O'Day, Alan and Boyce, D. G., eds., The making of modern Irish history: revisionism and the revisionist controversy (Dublin, 1997), pp. 15–33Google Scholar; Howe, Stephen, Ireland and empire: colonial legacies in Irish history and culture (Oxford, 2000), pp. 7–36Google Scholar; McBride, Ian, Eighteenth-century Ireland: the isle of slaves (Dublin, 2009), pp. 100–69Google Scholar; McGrath, Ireland and empire, pp. 37–9.

⁷ Froude, J. A., The English in Ireland (3 vols., London, 1872–4)Google Scholar. Froude's view is cited in Bartlett, Thomas, ‘From Irish state to British empire: reflections on state-building in Ireland, 1690–1830’, in Études irlandaises 20: l’état en Irlande (1995), pp. 23–9Google Scholar, at p. 24.

⁸ MacMillan, Gretchen, State, society and authority in Ireland (Dublin, 1993), pp. 43–62Google Scholar.

⁹ See, for example, Whelan, Kevin, ‘An underground gentry: Catholic middlemen in eighteenth-century Ireland’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 10 (1995), pp. 7–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Smyth, W. J., Map-making, landscapes and memory: a geography of colonial and early modern Ireland, c. 1530–1750 (Cork, 2006), pp. 345–60Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Lecky, W. E. H., A history of Ireland in the eighteenth century (5 vols., London, 1892)Google Scholar. Four of Lecky's five volumes were famously devoted to the period after 1782.

¹¹ Barnard, T. C., ‘Farewell to old Ireland’, Historical Journal, 36 (1993), pp. 909–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McBride, Eighteenth-century Ireland, pp. 1–25.

¹² Bartlett, ‘From Irish state to British empire’; Patrick McNally, 'Patronage and politics in Ireland, 1714–1727' (Ph.D., Queens University Belfast, 1993).

¹³ Bartlett, ‘From Irish state to British empire’, pp. 24–5; Garvin, Tom, The evolution of Irish nationalist politics (Dublin, 1981), p. 3Google Scholar.

¹⁴ McGrath, Charles Ivar, The making of the eighteenth-century Irish constitution (Dublin, 2000)Google Scholar; Hayton, D. W., ed., The Irish parliament in the eighteenth century: the long apprenticeship (Edinburgh, 2001)Google Scholar; Hayton, D. W., Kelly, James, and Bergin, John, eds., The eighteenth-century composite state: representative institutions in Ireland and Europe, 1689–1800 (Basingstoke, 2010)Google Scholar; and Brown, Michael and Donlan, Seán Patrick, eds., The law and other legalities of Ireland, 1689–1850 (Farnham, 2011)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Gwynn, Julian, ‘Financial revolution in Massachusetts: public credit and taxation, 1692–1774’, Histoire Sociale – Social History, 27 (1984), pp. 59–77Google Scholar, at p. 63.

¹⁶ For Hesse and Wurtemburg, see Hamish Scott, ‘The fiscal-military state and international rivalry’, in Storrs, ed., The fiscal-military state in eighteenth-century Europe, pp. 23–54, at pp. 48–9. For Scotland, see Murray, A. L. ‘Administration and the law’, in Rae, T. I., ed., The union of 1707: its impact on Scotland (Glasgow, 1974), pp. 30–57Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Barnard, Toby, The kingdom of Ireland, 1641–1760 (Basingstoke, 2004), p. 44Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Hayton, D. W. and Kelly, James, ‘The Irish parliament in European context: a representative institution in a composite state’, in Hayton, and Kelly, , eds., The eighteenth-century composite state, pp. 3–16Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Marshall, P. J., The making and unmaking of empires: Britain, India and America, c. 1750–1783 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 163–4Google Scholar; Conway, Stephen, War, state, and society in mid-eighteenth century Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2006), pp. 58–66Google Scholar. Compare this to the treatment of Ireland in Stone, ed., An imperial state at war, pp. 288–321, where the chapter on Ireland by Nicholas Canny entitled ‘Irish resistance to empire? 1641, 1690 and 1798’ focused on resistance to, rather than integration within, the imperial fiscal-military state.

²⁰ Thomas Bartlett, ‘“A weapon of war yet untried”: Irish Catholics and the armed forces of the crown, 1760–1830’, in Fraser, T. G. and Jeffery, Keith, eds., Men, women and war: historical studies XVIII (Dublin, 1993), p. 68Google Scholar; See also McGrath, Ireland and empire, which highlights the extent of unofficial Irish Catholic recruitment throughout the eighteenth century, esp. pp. 115–21.

²¹ McGrath, Ireland and empire, pp. 133–42.

²² For the ‘standing army’ debate in Britain, see Schwoerer, Lois G., ‘No standing army’: anti-army ideology in seventeenth-century England (Baltimore, MD, 1974)Google Scholar. For Ireland, see McGrath, C. I., ‘Waging war: the Irish military establishment and the British empire, 1688–1763’, in Mulligan, William and Simms, Brendan, eds., The primacy of foreign policy in British history, 1660–2000: how strategic concerns shaped modern Britain (Basingstoke, 2010), pp. 102–18Google Scholar, esp. pp. 104–6. It is worth noting that two of the greatest opponents of the standing army were the Anglo-Irish commonwealthmen Robert Molesworth and John Trenchard.

²³ On this network of barracks, see McGrath, Ireland and empire, pp. 69–106.

²⁴ The subscribers included nineteen MPs and seven peers as well as a number of parliamentary officials and clerks, The journals of the House of Commons of the kingdom of Ireland (21 vols., 3rd edn, 1796–1800) (hereafter CJI), iii, appendix, pp. cxiii–cxiv.

²⁵ McGrath, Ireland and empire, pp. 129, 155, 184.

²⁶ For the history of the Irish national debt, see ibid., pp. 181–96.

²⁷ Macartney, George, An account of Ireland in 1773: by a late chief secretary in that kingdom (London, 1773), p. 51Google Scholar.

²⁸ The influence of the classic whig view as pioneered by Macaulay can still be seen in the works of the New Institutional Economists, notably in Douglas North and Barry Weingast's extraordinarily influential ‘Constitutions and commitment: the evolution of institutions governing public choice in seventeenth-century England’, Journal of Economic History, 49 (1989), pp. 802–32.

²⁹ See amongst others Roseveare, Henry, The financial revolution, 1660–1760 (London, 1991)Google Scholar; and Ashworth, William J., Customs and excise: trade, production, and consumption in England, 1640–1845 (Oxford, 2003), esp. pp. 15–34Google Scholar.

³⁰ For the introduction of the excise into Britain see Roseveare, Financial revolution, pp. 6–8.

³¹ 14 &15 Car. II, c. 7, c. 8. See Reamonn, Sean, History of the revenue commissioners (Dublin, 1981), pp. 13–16.Google Scholar More generally see Kiernan, T. J., History of the financial administration of Ireland to 1817 (London, 1930), esp. pp. 232–72Google Scholar.

³² Marmaduke Coghill to Lord John Perceval, 5 Apr. 1729 (D. W. Hayton, ed., Letters of Marmaduke Coghill, 1722–1738 (Dublin, 2005), p. 65); Maurice Ronayne to Lord Grandison, 3 Oct. 1729, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), T3131/C/5/48; Thomas Carter to Lord Harrington, 19 Jan. 1749, PRONI, T3019/1242.

³³ Macartney, Account of Ireland, pp. 76–94; Reamonn, Revenue commissioners, pp. 6–12Google Scholar.

³⁴ For the quit rent figures see the bi-annual accounts presented to parliament, CJI, ii, appendix, pp. iv, xxxii, cviii, cxxi, cxlvi, cxlviii, clxxviii, ccxi, ccxl, and cclxiv; iii, appendix, pp. v, civ, cliv, cxcii, ccxxxiv, cclxxxix, cccxxviii, and ccclxi; iv, appendix, pp. ii, xx, l, lxxi–lxxii, ciii–civ, cxxxvii–cxxxviii, clv–clvi, ccxlvi–ccxlvii, and cclxxiii–cclxxiv; v, appendix, pp. iii–v, xxix–xxx, ccxlvii–ccxlviii, and cclxvii–cclxviii; vi, appendix, pp. iii–iv, and clxx–clxxi; vii, appendix, pp. ix–x, and cxxxvi–cxxxvii.

³⁵ See Dickson, David, Ò'Gràda, Cormac, and Daultrey, Stuart, ‘Hearth tax, household size and Irish population change, 1672–1821’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Section C, 82 (1982), pp. 135–9Google Scholar.

³⁶ Ibid., pp. 180–1.

³⁷ McGrath, C. I., ‘Money, politics and power: the financial legislation of the Irish parliament’, in Kelly, Hayton, and Bergin, , eds., The eighteenth-century composite state, pp. 21–43Google Scholar.

³⁸ Connolly, S. J., Divided kingdom: Ireland, 1630–1800 (Oxford, 2008), p. 197Google Scholar.

³⁹ Cullen, L. M., An economic history of Ireland since 1660 (2nd edn, London, 1987), pp. 27–33Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ British net revenue figures are found in the Accounts of net public income and expenditure of Great Britain and Ireland, 1688–1800 (British Parliamentary Papers, xxxv (1868–9), pp. 227–53) (hereafter 1869 report). See also Brewer, Sinews of power, p. 90.

⁴¹ I am indebted to Julian Hoppit for sharing with me the English and Welsh figures in this paragraph, which are drawn from his unpublished research.

⁴² Brewer, Sinews of power, pp. 100–1.

⁴³ Kelly, Patrick, ‘The politics of political economy in mid-eighteenth century Ireland’, in Connolly, S. J., ed., Political thought in eighteenth-century Ireland (Dublin, 2000), pp. 105–29Google Scholar; Cullen, L. M., ‘Economic development, 1691–1750’, in Moody, T. W. and Vaughan, W. E., eds., A new history of Ireland, iv: Eighteenth-century Ireland, 1691–1800 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 123–31Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Bartlett, ‘Viscount Townshend and the Irish revenue board’, pp. 153–75.

⁴⁵ Reamonn, Revenue commissioners, p. 17. See also Sean Egan, ‘Finance and the government of Ireland, 1660–1685’ (Ph.D. thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1983). The hearth tax continued to be farmed until 1706, when it was finally taken in under the management of the Custom House.

⁴⁶ The earliest surviving Irish establishment list dating from 1684 lists 609 officers, The National Archives (TNA), Irish revenue establishment lists, CUST20/56.

⁴⁷ This figure is based on the surviving series of establishment lists, TNA, CUST 20/56–137.

⁴⁸ For the twenty-two customs districts see PRONI D1618/18/3.

⁴⁹ Thomas Southwell, Thomas Medlycott, and William Conolly to Strickland and Gybbons, 26 Apr. 1716, National Library of Ireland (NLI), letterbook of James Forth, secretary to the Revenue Commissioners, MS 16.007, fos. 15–16.

⁵⁰ See Edward Weston to Sir Robert Wilmot, 8 Mar. 1750; John Love to Edward Weston(?), 3 Apr. 1750, commissioners to Lord Harrington, 7 Apr. 1750, and Weston to George Stone, 12 May 1750 ( Walton, James, ed., ‘The kings business’: letters on the administration of Ireland, 1740–1761, from the papers of Sir Robert Wilmot (New York, NY, 1996), pp. 38–41Google Scholar).

⁵¹ Dickson, David, Old world colony: Cork and south Munster 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005), p. 537 n. 51Google Scholar.

⁵² The duties expected of each officer were carefully laid out in manuscript ‘instruction books’. See, for example, NLI, MS 11,069, ‘The constitution of the exchequer in Ireland & c. with the establishment thereof, & the officers names belonging to it c. 1734’.

⁵³ This central bureaucracy doubled in size between 1704 and 1740, employing seventy individuals by the latter date, TNA, CUST20/71–108.

⁵⁴ Walsh, Patrick, The making of the Irish Protestant ascendancy: the life of William Conolly, 1662–1729 (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 131–5Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ For failed legislative attempts to encourage residency see Reamonn, Revenue commissioners, p. 21.

⁵⁶ D. W. Hayton, ‘Ireland and the English ministers, 1707–1716’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 1975), p. 261; Conolly and Medlycott to the commissioners resident in London, 9 Mar. 1720, NLI, MS 16,007, fo. 78.

⁵⁷ Marmaduke Coghill to Edward Southwell, 14 Dec. 1728 (Hayton, ed., Letters, p. 59); Katherine Conolly to Charles Delafaye, 17 June 1729, TNA, SP/63/391, fo. 71.

⁵⁸ Dickson, David, ‘Edward Thompson's report on the management of customs and excise in County Kerry in 1733’, Journal of Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society, 7 (1974), p. 12Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Ashworth, Customs and excise, p. 363; R. V. Clarendon, A sketch of the revenue and finances of Ireland (London, 1791), fig. vii, n.p.; ‘Report of the committee appointed to enquire into the state and management of the revenue for twenty years past’, in CJI, vi, appendix, pp. cxxxvii–clxii.

⁶⁰ See, for example, Anon., The management of the revenue with queries thereto (Dublin, 1758)Google Scholar. See also Macartney, Account of Ireland, pp. 109–15. On this point, see Fleming, David, Politics and provincial people: Sligo and Limerick, 1691–1761 (Manchester, 2010), p. 172Google Scholar. See also Dickson, ‘Edward Thompson's report’, pp. 12–13.

⁶¹ See especially McNally, Patrick, Parties, patriots and undertakers: parliamentary politics in early eighteenth-century Ireland (Dublin, 1997)Google Scholar, passim, but also Bartlett, ‘Viscount Townshend and the Irish revenue board’, esp. pp. 155–7, 162–3, and 175, and Malcomson, A. P. W., John Foster: the politics of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy (Oxford, 1978), pp. 102–5Google Scholar.

⁶² Walsh, The making of the Irish Protestant ascendancy, pp. 142–4.

⁶³ Coghill to Southwell, 3 Feb. 1730 (Hayton, ed., Letters, p. 89).

⁶⁴ Patrick Walsh, 'The sin of with-holding tribute: contemporary pamphlets and the professionalization of the Irish revenue service in the early eighteenth century', Eighteenth Century Ireland, 21 (2006), pp. 48–65; see also Fleming, Politics and provincial people, p. 165.

⁶⁵ Coghill to Southwell, 22 Jan., 7 May, 1730, 19 Apr., 4 Dec. 1733, and 8 May 1735 (Hayton, ed., Letters, pp. 86–87, 99, 126, 146, 164).

⁶⁶ For suggestions that Ponsonby was particularly active in using the revenue board as a font of political patronage see Bartlett, ‘Viscount Townshend and the Irish revenue board’, pp. 155–7.

⁶⁷ The records were originally transferred to the Custom House in London before being transferred to the Public Record Office, now The National Archives, in the 1980s.

⁶⁸ Minute books of the Irish revenue commissioners (hereafter Rev. commrs. min. bk.), 1696–1769, TNA, CUST1/3-110. Other historians have made use of these records for specific periods, e.g. McNally, ‘Patronage and politics in Ireland, 1714–1727’, pp. 73–111, and for specific places e.g. Fleming, Politics and provincial people, pp. 163–92.

⁶⁹ For Eccles see Rev. commrs. min. bk, 17 Nov. 1720, TNA, CUST1/15, fo. 42. For Cust, see Clarkson, L. A. and Crawford, E. M., Ways to wealth: the Cust family of eighteenth century Armagh (Belfast, 1985), pp. 40–3Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Coghill to Southwell, 18 Dec. 1735 (Hayton, ed., Letters, p. 180).

⁷¹ For the process of ‘removes’ in the English excise see Brewer, Sinews of power, p. 110.

⁷² Hoon, E. E., The organization of the English customs system, 1696–1786 (London, 1938), p. 239Google Scholar.

⁷³ Rev. commrs. min. bk, 25 Sept., 17 Oct. 1764, TNA, CUST1/83, fos. 118, 157.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 30 June 1736, TNA, CUST1/28, fo. 22; 19 July 1744, TNA, CUST1/37, fo. 89; 8 Oct. 1744, TNA, CUST1/38, fo. 10.

⁷⁵ Examples of officers suffering injury in the course of their duty are numerous; for three examples from June to July 1736 covering incidents in Strabane (Co. Tyrone), Loughrea (Co. Galway), and Kinsale (Co. Cork), see ibid., 19, 25 June, 2 July 1736, TNA CUST1/28, fos. 2, 14, and 26.

⁷⁶ The board ordered 600 copies of John Ballard's ‘Gauging unmasked’ to be printed in 1734 after the text was carefully considered by two of the surveyors general, ibid., 9 Oct. 1744, TNA, CUST1/26, fo. 229. Attempts to locate a surviving copy of Ballard's work have failed, but it was not the only work published in such a manner, see Walsh, ‘Sin of with-holding tribute’, p. 62.

⁷⁷ Rev. commrs. min. bk, 24 Jan., 3 Dec. 1739, TNA, CUST1/30, fos. 86, 254.

⁷⁸ Ibid., 11 Dec. 1764, TNA, CUST1/84, fo. 92.

⁷⁹ Ibid., 6 July 1724, TNA, CUST1/17, fo. 167; ibid., 30 Dec. 1734, TNA, CUST1/26, fo. 334. See also Coghill to Southwell, 14 Jan. 1735 (Hayton, ed., Letters, p. 152).

⁸⁰ See for instance the list of casualties in the Port Department report presented to the Irish Commons in 1786, CJI, xii, appendix part ii, p. dxl. I am indebted to Martyn Powell for this reference.

⁸¹ O'Brien, ‘The political economy of British taxation’, p. 5.

⁸² For two important exceptions, focusing on Sligo and Limerick and Fingal in north Dublin respectively, see Fleming, Politics and provincial people, pp. 163–92, and Mhurchadha, Maighréad Ní, The customs and excise service in Fingal, 1684–1764: sober, active and bred to the sea (Dublin, 1999)Google Scholar.

⁸³ Rev. commrs. min. bk., 31 July 1724, TNA, CUST1/18, fo. 5.

⁸⁴ Thomas Bacon, A compleat system of the revenue of Ireland, in its several branches of import, export, and inland duties (Dublin, 1737), p. viii. A report submitted to the treasury by the Irish revenue commissioners in 1755 highlighted the continuing problems and the difficulties faced in tackling wool smuggling, and particularly highlighted the higher rate of incidences on the west coast. ‘Report of the commissioners of revenue in Ireland, 29 Jan 1755, on running of wool from Ireland to France’, TNA, T1/361/21. I am indebted to Julian Hoppit for this latter reference.

⁸⁵ Cullen, L. M., Anglo-Irish trade, 1660–1800 (Manchester, 1968), pp. 139–55Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ Cullen, L. M., ‘Economic development, 1750–1800’, in Moody, and Vaughan, , eds., New history of Ireland, pp. 188–92Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ For the increased naval presence see Thomas Tickell to Josiah Burchett, 19 Aug. 1730, TNA, ADM1/3390; George Sclater, Waterford, to Josiah Burchett, 26 Jan. 1732, TNA, ADM1/2455.

⁸⁸ See the descriptions of British parliamentary debates on this issue in the diary of Lord John Perceval, later 1st earl of Egmont, throughout the 1730s. Egmont was the leader of an informal Irish lobby at Westminster, and his records of debates are therefore extremely valuable (Historical Manuscripts Commission, Egmont diary (3 vols., London, 1923), i, pp. 128, 155–6, 158–61, and 168–70).

⁸⁹ Swift, Jonathan, ‘Advice to the free-men of the city Dublin, in the choice of a member to represent them in parliament’, in Davis, Herbert et al. , eds., The prose writings of Jonathan Swift (16 vols., Oxford, 1939–74), xiii, pp. 79–85Google Scholar. It has proved impossible to trace the pamphlet Swift alleged had been written by Thompson.

⁹⁰ Thompson was specifically ordered to conduct the investigation in a letter from the lords of the treasury to the Irish revenue commissioners dated 15 May 1733, TNA T14/11, fo. 224. See also Coghill to Edward Southwell jnr, 7 July 1733 (Hayton, ed., p. 129).

⁹¹ Ashworth, Customs and excise, p. 77. For Irish calls for greater naval assistance, see the correspondence between the Irish administration and the lords of the Admiralty, TNA, ADM/1, 3989, 3990.

⁹² Rev. commrs. min. bk, 11, 13 Dec. 1732, TNA, CUST1/25, fos. 1, 4; ibid., 30 June, 18 Sept., 12 Dec. 1764, TNA, CUST1/82, fo. 91, CUST1/83, fo. 104, CUST1/84, fo. 95.

⁹³ For the expansion of the fleet see the establishment books, TNA CUST20/56–137, which from 1729 included details of the crews who manned the revenue's cruisers.

⁹⁴ Historical Manuscripts Commission, Egmont diary, i, p. 164; Admiralty board minutes, 21 Sept. 1738, TNA, ADM 3/43. I am indebted to Louis Cullen for the latter reference and for allowing me to read an unpublished paper on the Admiralty's anti-smuggling activities.

⁹⁵ McDowell, R. B., ‘Colonial nationalism, 1760–1782’, in Moody, and Vaughan, , eds., New history of Ireland, p. 231Google Scholar.

⁹⁶ For references to recruitment see the captains letters of ships stationed off the Irish coasts in TNA, Admiralty papers, ADM1/2446 (1706), ADM1/2377 (1726), ADM1/2039 (1733), ADM1/2098 (1735), ADM1/1695 (1739), ADM1/1600 (1740), and ADM1/1783 (1755).

⁹⁷ ‘Edward Thompson's report into the state of the revenue, 1733’, National Archives of Ireland, Rev 1/1). For some details on the origins of the report see Dickson, ‘Edward Thompson's Report’, pp. 13–14.

⁹⁸ Rev. commrs. min. bk, 30 May 1733, TNA CUST1/25, fo. 167.

⁹⁹ Ibid., 3–9 Aug. 1733, 16, 29 May 1734, TNA, CUST1/25, fos. 267–82, CUST1/26, fos. 53–4, 63–7).

¹⁰⁰ Bacon, A compleat system of the revenue of Ireland, p. viii; Toby Barnard ‘The Dublin Society and other improving societies, 1731–1785’, in Kelly, James and Powell, Martyn, eds., Clubs and societies in eighteenth-century Ireland (Dublin, 2010), pp. 53–89Google Scholar.

¹⁰¹ For Bindon's activities, see Fleming, Politics and provincial people, pp. 179–81. For the anti-smuggling association in Coleraine, and another in Wexford, see Rev. commrs. min. bk, 23 Feb. 1733, 21 Jan. 1744, TNA, CUST1/25, fo. 52, CUST1/37, fo. 72.

¹⁰² For references to new custom houses at Kinsale, Galway, and Dundalk see Rev. commrs. min. bk, 17 Aug., 15 Dec. 1736, and 2 Nov. 1737, TNA, CUST1/ 28, fos. 100 and 264, CUST1/29, fo. 64.

¹⁰³ In 1764 alone, one excise officer was assaulted at a fair in Mallow, Co. Cork, while another was tried and acquitted for murder following the death of a man at a fair in the same town during the previous year. Ibid., 14 Jan., 15 Feb. 12 Apr. 1764, TNA CUST1/80, fos. 4 and 84, CUST1/81, fo. 78.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., 28 Feb., 5 May 1764, TNA CUST1/80, fo. 111, CUST1/81, fo. 119.

¹⁰⁵ McGrath, Ireland and empire, pp. 143–66.

¹⁰⁶ For 1736–9 see Rev. commrs. min. bk, TNA, CUST1/28–30, while for 1764 see CUST1/79–84. See Barnard, The kingdom of Ireland, p. 51, where he notes increased military assistance for the revenue officers in the 1750s and 1760s.

¹⁰⁷ Rev. commrs. min. bk, 25 Feb. 1764, TNA CUST1/80, fo. 101.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., 14 Mar. 1734, TNA, CUST1/25, fo. 507.

¹⁰⁹ S. J. Connolly, ‘The defence of Protestant Ireland, 1660–1760’, in Bartlett, Thomas and Jeffery, Keith, eds., A military history of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 130–58Google Scholar; McGrath, Ireland and empire, p. 113. Although see McCracken, J. L., ‘Political structure, 1714–1760’, in Moody, and Vaughan, , eds., New history of Ireland, p. 83Google Scholar.