The article highlights how the closure of Ferryquay Gate was both a spontaneous gesture by apprentices and a catalyst that compelled hesitant civic leaders to choose between accommodation and resistance. Striking is the negotiated exclusion of Antrim’s regiment: it suggests that trust in military authority depended not only on allegiance, but on perceived religious security, local relationships and memories of land settlement. Mountjoy’s acceptance further complicates a simple Catholic–Protestant division. How far should the Derry episode be understood primarily as sectarian self-defence, rather than as a calculated political response to collapsing royal authority and fears about property, governance and survival?