Part One includes: The king's serjeant and the legal system of the Irish medieval lordship; The king's serjeant in Tudor Ireland, 1485- 1603; The serjeants in the Stuart era, 1603- 90; From the Boyne to the Union - The serjeants in eighteenth-century Ireland; and The serjeants in post-Union Ireland. Part Two includes the succession list of the serjeants at law; and Part Three includes biographical details of the serjeants at law.

This book presents a picture of Ireland in the 18th century from 1702 to 1800, the era of the so-called Protestant Ascendancy and the Penal Laws. It deals with Irish Society, and Irish history of that period. Every effort has been made to remove the traditional distortions of Catholic nationalist propaganda. Irish Protestants are regarded as Irishmen and their achievements are regarded as Irish achievements. The darker sides of the period are not ignored.

Originally published: 5th ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1956.

First published in 1971. The class of whom these pages treat were those who held their lands ' by serjeanty, ' that is, by the performance of some specified service, either at all times or in time of war. We may now turn to those serjeanties which can be traced back to the time of the Domesday Survey. Several of them will be dealt with, in detail, in this volume.