High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Anglo-Irish was a term used historically to describe a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Anglican Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until 1871, or to a lesser extent one of the English dissenting churches, such as the Methodist church. Its usage continued in the Victorian era, when it described a class composed mostly of Church of Ireland adherents who had adopted many English customs. The term is not usually applied to Presbyterians in Northern Ireland, whose ancestry is mostly Scottish and who are usually identified as "Ulster-Scots. In England and Ireland the term is also used informally to refer to anyone with ties of blood, residency or citizenship to both countries. In the United States, people who identify with the Ulster-Scots are usually called "Scotch-Irish," while people whose ancestry can be traced to the Anglo-Irish may refer to themselves simply as "Irish."
