Essex’s arrival highlights a revealing tension in Restoration Ireland: Dublin Castle pursued centralisation and occasionally flexible treatment of Catholics, yet preserved Protestant control over corporations through the Oath of Supremacy. This suggests that toleration functioned less as equality than as a carefully managed instrument of stability, shaped by war, revenue and local power. Petty’s effort to measure land and people similarly connects administration to the legacy of conquest and redistribution. How far should we interpret Essex’s policies and the Declaration of Indulgence as genuine attempts to broaden accommodation, rather than pragmatic methods of strengthening a central state while maintaining ascendancy?