Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Colophon
- List of Abbreviations
- Editorial note
- Map showing principal places mentioned in the text and approximate presbytery boundaries (1704)
- Introduction
- 1 Ministers
- 2 Gentry
- 3 Merchants and Commerce
- 4 The Professions
- 5 The Lower Orders
- 6 Organisation and Religious Practice
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - The Professions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Colophon
- List of Abbreviations
- Editorial note
- Map showing principal places mentioned in the text and approximate presbytery boundaries (1704)
- Introduction
- 1 Ministers
- 2 Gentry
- 3 Merchants and Commerce
- 4 The Professions
- 5 The Lower Orders
- 6 Organisation and Religious Practice
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter will consider Presbyterian involvement in the professions of law and medicine. There is now an extensive literature on the professions in early modern England, and historians such as Toby Barnard and Patrick Fagan have explored aspects, respectively, of Protestant and Catholic involvement in the professions in Ireland. Traditionally studies of the Irish legal profession have focused on the senior law officers and judges, but in 2000 Hazel Maynard completed an informative thesis which has widened our knowledge by exploring the backgrounds and careers of the Irish members who attended the English Inns of Court during the 40 years after the Restoration. I hope to build on, and extend, Maynard's work by looking at the involvement of Presbyterians in the legal profession not only in the late seventeenth century but also after 1700, particularly considering the impact of the sacramental test enacted in 1704. Irish medical historiography has tended to focus on the lives of a few notable or exceptional practitioners or on the history of particular hospitals or institutions, such as the Irish Royal College of Physicians. Much of what has been written has focused on Dublin and, with the exception of brief references to Dr Victor Ferguson of Belfast in Barnard's New anatomy, there has been no exploration of Presbyterian involvement in medicine or even how the inhabitants of Ulster received medical treatment. The issue of Presbyterians and medicine, therefore, is one that requires attention.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Presbyterians of Ulster, 1680-1730 , pp. 124 - 155Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013