Clonmel’s 1696 order to billet soldiers in Catholic homes exposes the tension between economic participation and political exclusion after the Williamite war. Catholics could continue trading in the town, yet their households were treated as potential sites of conspiracy, subject to surveillance and the burdens of quartering. This local measure also complicates any simple notion that peace brought security, since administrative routines could make post-war authority intimate and unequal. How should we interpret the relationship between Clonmel’s commercial dependence on Catholic residents and its corporation’s decision to police their domestic lives: pragmatic coexistence, deliberate intimidation, or both locally in practice?