Studies of Ireland in the 1660s invariably focus on the mechanisms of the land settlement. This was the process by which property rights were settled under the Stuarts following the programme of confiscation and transplantation that had been implemented during the Protectorate. This thesis is a study of the political processes that accompanied and determined the Stuart settlement. It complements works that delineate the land settlement while providing an original contribution to the political history of the period. The Stuart Restoration ushered in a period of instability for Irish Protestants and their tenure of power in the kingdom as regime change brought challenges to the moral and legal basis of power that had been established under the preceding government. Catholic challenges to Protestant power have been examined, demonstrating the importance of understandings and ideas to the justification of power. Catholics formulated legal and moral arguments against the continued dominance of Protestants in the kingdom, thereby undermining the idea that Protestant power was the rightful outcome of a war in which they had been persecuted and in which Catholics had behaved treacherously. Meanwhile, physical clashes between members of the two confessional groups were imagined as the continuation of the war of the 1640s and 1650s. The manner in which Protestant identity was promoted proved a challenge to royal authority as Protestants insisted that governance be rooted in their understandings of the recent past. This past was promoted as the victory of the 'English', leaving little room for veneration of the role of a king whose presence on the throne had not been necessary to English triumph. The king was called upon to officially sanction and adopt the attributes of the 'English in Ireland' and his reluctance to do so proved contentious. The hostilities which were aroused led to political dissidence in the context of wider 'anti-popish' and anti-monarchical sentiment in Britain and this thesis explores the manner in which general concerns could be expressed through rivalries over land in Ireland. This thesis is a study of the symbiotic relationship between ideas and actions in the 1660s. It shows that Ireland was a battleground for competing conceptions of society and history and that it proved an early site of conflict for the restored regime.