Select Document: the Case of Robert Ayleway esqr, late Comptroller of the Artillery in Ireland, 1692

Abstract

Abstract This article examines a petition drawn up by Robert Ayleway, an official within the Irish fiscal-military state in 1692, in connection with charges of corruption and incompetence during the Williamite Wars (1689–91). Ayleway’s petition, and his wider career, demonstrate that he was part of a process of English and Irish state formation that had begun well before 1688, driven by informal patronage networks as much as by formal bureaucratic developments, creating an entrenched interest group of officials that nevertheless came into conflict after 1689 with new officers, many of them foreign, who came to Ireland in William III’s train. Both sides suspected the loyalty of the other, but the petition reveals that Ayleway saw himself, with some justice, as a competent and loyal official who had used his private means to serve the public in a way that had also advanced his own private interests, suggesting something of the ethos of officials within the new Irish (and English) fiscal-military state.