The Elizabethan Conquest Of Ireland

Queen Elizabeth’s bloody rule over Ireland is examined in this “richly-textured, impressively researched and powerfully involving” history (Roy Foster, author of Modern Ireland, 1600–1972). England’s violent subjugation of Ireland in the sixteenth century under Queen Elizabeth I was one of the most consequential chapters in the long, tumultuous relationship between the two countries. In this engaging and scholarly history, James C. Roy tells the story of revolt, suppression, atrocities, and genocide in the first colonial “failed state”. At the time, Ireland was viewed as a peripheral theater, a haven for Catholic heretics, and a potential “back door” for foreign invasions. Tormented by such fears, lord deputies sent by the queen reacted with an iron hand. These men and their subordinates—including great writers such as Edmund spencer and Walter Raleigh—would gather in salons to pore over the “Irish Question”. But such deliberations were rewarded by no final triumph, only debilitating warfare that stretched across Elizabeth’s long rule.

This book is about the impact of the nine years' war on central and local government and society in the English and Welsh shires in the 1590's. It contains fascinating new insights into the centrality of Ireland to England's problems in the crucial last decade of Elizabeth I's reign.

The Elizabethan conquest of Ireland sparked off two linguistic events of enduring importance: it initiated the language shift from Irish to English, which constitutes the great drama of Irish cultural history, and it marked the beginnings of English linguistic expansion. The Elizabethan colonisers in Ireland included some of the leading poets and translators of the day. In Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland, Patricia Palmer uses their writings, as well as material from the State Papers, to explore the part that language played in shaping colonial ideology and English national identity. Palmer shows how manoeuvres of linguistic expansion rehearsed in Ireland shaped Englishmen's encounters with the languages of the New World, and frames that analysis within a comparison between English linguistic colonisation and Spanish practice in the New World. This is an ambitious, comparative study, which will interest literary and political historians.

A study of the Jacobean regime's use of judge-made law to consolidate the Tudor conquest.

This is the story of the 'failed' British Empire in Ireland and the sad end of the Tudor reign. The relationship between England and Ireland has been marked by turmoil ever since the 5th century, when Irish raiders kidnapped St. Patrick. Perhaps the most consequential chapter in this saga was the subjugation of the island during the 16th century, and particularly efforts associated with the long reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the reverberations of which remain unsettled even today. This is the story of that ‘First British Empire’. The saga of the Elizabethan conquest has rarely received the attention it deserves, long overshadowed by more ‘glamorous’ events that challenged the queen, most especially those involving Catholic Spain and France, superpowers with vastly more resources than Protestant England. Ireland was viewed as a peripheral theater, a haven for Catholic heretics and a potential ‘back door’ for foreign invasions. Lord deputies sent by the queen were tormented by such fears, and reacted with an iron hand. Their cadres of subordinates, including poets and writers as gifted as Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and Walter Raleigh, were all corrupted in the process, their humanist values disfigured by the realities of Irish life as they encountered them through the lens of conquest and appropriation. These men considered the future of Ireland to be an extension of the British state, as seen in the ‘salon’ at Bryskett’s Cottage, outside Dublin, where guests met to pore over the ‘Irish Question’. But such deliberations were rewarded by no final triumph, only debilitating warfare that stretched the entire length of Elizabeth’s rule. This is the story of revolt, suppression, atrocities and genocide, and ends with an ailing, dispirited queen facing internal convulsions and an empty treasury. Her death saw the end of the Tudor dynasty, marked not by victory over the great enemy Spain, but by ungovernable Ireland – the first colonial ‘failed state’.

"This book addresses the evolution and impact of the Tudor re-conquest of Ireland on the Old English colonial community through a detailed study of The Book of Howth."--Back cover.