This study of establishment Dublin in the Elizabethan period draws on the consider- able body of documentation which survives in the city archives and elsewhere - assembly rolls from 1550, treasury and sheriffs records from 1541, and minutes of the alderman's bench the corporation from 1567 - and also on a wide variety of other contemporary writings and sources. The Dublin of the period saw the rise of the aldermanic elite to a dominant role in civic politics and society. Dr Lennon explores the world of these patricians against the background of civic privilege, state policy and the growth of recusancy. He is also concerned to show how they consolidated their social position through marriage with fellow-patricians and gentry, and investment in urban and rural properties. Reconstructed biographies of some hundred leading councillors are supplied. In the course of the study, the author provides a valuable survey of the topography and history of late medieval Dublin and of public affairs in general in the period 1548- 1613.