Reconstructing an Early Modern Irish Economic Community

Tax assessments provide unique information about the individual and relative wealth of early modern individuals and communities, but few such sources exist for early modern Ireland, so the survival of a tax assessment for the most prosperous inhabitants of Clonmel in 1642 is a unique source for the study of the town’s economic community in that year. An analysis of the tax paid by these men and women provides not merely unrivalled information about their personal wealth but also about the relative prosperity of different occupation groups, including merchants, craftsmen and women, the most important sectors of the local economy and settlement patterns in one early modern Irish town.