Dublin Trader, Killarney Inns
Ireland remained a separate kingdom under George II, governed through a lord lieutenant and Dublin Castle, with its own parliament at College Green. That parliament was overwhelmingly an institution of the Protestant political elite: Roman Catholics could not sit in it, while the restrictions conventionally called the penal laws continued to shape property, education, public office and religious life. Yet the formal legislature was largely absent from public business in 1758. Proclamations repeatedly postponed parliament: first to 8 June, then to 18 July, 29 August and finally to 24 April 1759. The sequence is a useful reminder that much government was conducted through executive authority, county officials, grand juries, courts and local corporations rather than through continuous parliamentary debate.