Studies in Early Modern Irish History – serie

This book is the first major academic study of the Ulster Plantation in over 25 years. The pivotal importance of the Plantation to the shared histories of Ireland and Britain would be difficult to overstate. It helped secure the English conquest of Ireland, and dramatically transformed Ireland’s physical, political, religious and cultural landscapes. The legacies of the Plantation are still contested to this day, but as the Peace Process evolves and the violence of the previous forty years begins to recede into memory, vital space has been created for a timely reappraisal of the plantation process and its role in identity formation within Ulster, Ireland and beyond. This collection of essays by leading scholars in the field offers an important redress in terms of the previous coverage of the plantations, moving away from an exclusive colonial perspective, to include the native Catholic experience, and in so doing will hopefully stimulate further research into this crucial episode in Irish and British history.

The 1641 rebellion is one of the seminal events in early modern Irish and British history. Its divisive legacy, based primarily on the sharply contested allegation that the rebellion began with a general massacre of Protestant settlers, is still evident in Ireland today. Indeed, the 1641 ‘massacres’, like the battles at the Boyne (1690) and Somme (1916), played a key role in creating and sustaining a collective Protestant/ British identity in Ulster, in much the same way that the subsequent Cromwellian conquest in the 1650s helped forge a new Irish Catholic national identity. The original and wide-ranging themes chosen by leading international scholars for this volume will ensure that this edited collection becomes required reading for all those interested in the history of early modern Europe. It will also appeal to those engaged in early colonial studies in the Atlantic world and beyond, as the volume adopts a genuinely comparative approach throughout, examining developments in a broad global context.

This book is the first major academic study of the Ulster Plantation in over twenty-five years, newly available in paperback. The pivotal importance of the plantation to the shared histories of Ireland and Britain would be difficult to overstate. It helped secure the English conquest of Ireland, and dramatically transformed Ireland’s physical, political, religious and cultural landscapes. The legacies of the plantation are still contested to this day, but as the peace process evolves and the violence of the previous forty years begins to recede into memory, vital space has been created for a timely reappraisal of the plantation process and its role in identity formation within Ulster, Ireland and beyond. This collection of essays by leading scholars in the field offers an important redress in terms of the previous coverage of the plantations, moving away from an exclusive colonial perspective, to include the native Catholic experience, and in so doing will hopefully stimulate further research into this crucial episode in Irish and British history.

Exploring Irish-Scottish connections in the period 1603–60, this book brings important new perspectives to the study of the early Stuart state. Acknowledging the pivotal role of the Hiberno-Scottish world, it identifies some of the limits of England’s Anglicising influence in the northern and western ‘British Isles’ and the often slight basis on which the Stuart pursuit of a new ‘British’ consciousness operated. Regarding the Anglo-Scottish relationship, it was chiefly in Ireland that the English and Scots intermingled after 1603, with a variety of consequences, often destabilising. The importance of the Gaelic sphere in Irish-Scottish connections also receives much greater attention here than in previous accounts. This Gaedhealtacht played a central role in the transmission of religious radicalism, both Catholic and Protestant, in Ireland and Scotland, ultimately leading to political crisis and revolution within the British Isles.

The 1641 rebellion is one of the seminal events in early modern Irish and British history. Its divisive legacy, based primarily on the sharply contested allegation that the rebellion began with a general massacre of Protestant settlers, is still evident in Ireland today. Indeed, the 1641 ‘massacres’, like the battles at the Boyne (1690) and Somme (1916), played a key role in creating and sustaining a collective Protestant/ British identity in Ulster, in much the same way that the subsequent Cromwellian conquest in the 1650s helped forge a new Irish Catholic national identity. Following a successful hardback edition, Ó Siochrú and OIhlmeyer's popular title is now available in paperback. The original and wide-ranging themes chosen by leading international scholars for this volume will ensure that this edited collection becomes required reading for all those interested in the history of early modern Europe. It will also appeal to those engaged in early colonial studies in the Atlantic world and beyond, as the volume adopts a genuinely comparative approach throughout, examining developments in a broad global context.

Ireland was conquered and gradually colonized by the Tudors during the sixteenth century. This much is clear but whether or not this was the actual goal of English policy in Ireland at that time has long been debated by historians. Debating Tudor policy in sixteenth-century Ireland examines a set of sources which provide a unique insight into English rule in Tudor Ireland. These are policy papers or treatises written at the time on how to ‘reform’ Ireland and bring it under greater crown control. The study constitutes the first systematic study of the approximately six-hundred such treatises to have survived. In doing so it sheds light on how the Tudors arrived at the policies they decided to implement in Ireland and examines how English officials and other parties within Ireland viewed the Irish and the country at that time.

The crisis that befell Ireland in the 1640s has always fascinated historians. This volume of essays presents cutting-edge research on various aspects of the Irish wars, notably regionalism, the nature of English interventions, popular politics and the problems of allegiance, authority and legitimacy in church and state. The chapters include studies of the earl of Cork in Munster, the earl of Clanricarde in Connacht and Lord Montgomery in Ulster, as well as the Confederate Catholic engagement with popular politics. The role of the marquess of Ormond, the Irish Parliament and the Church of Ireland are also examined in new ways, and the volume ends with a fresh look at the war of words between Oliver Cromwell and the Catholic Church. Ireland in crisis presents a very different view of the period that challenges existing assumptions. It will appeal to lecturers, students and the general reader.

This book is about the transformation of England’s trade and government finances in the mid-seventeenth century, a revolution that destroyed Ireland. In 1642 a small group of merchants, the ‘Adventurers for Irish land’, raised an army to conquer Ireland but sent it instead to fight for parliament in England. Meeting secretly at Grocers Hall in London from 1642 to 1660, they laid the foundations of England’s empire and modern fiscal state. But a dispute over their Irish land entitlements led them to reject Cromwell’s Protectorate and plot to restore the monarchy. This is the first book to chart the relentless rise of the Adventurers and their profound political influence. It is essential reading for students of Britain and Ireland in the mid-seventeenth century, the origins of England’s empire and the Cromwellian land settlement.

The Irish parliament was both the scene of frequent political battles and an important administrative and legal element of the state machinery of early modern Ireland. This institutional study looks at how parliament dispatched its business on a day-to-day basis. It takes in major areas of responsibility such as creating law, delivering justice, conversing with the executive and administering parliamentary privilege. Its ultimate aim is to present the Irish parliament as one of many such representative assemblies emerging from the feudal state and into the modern world, with a changing set of responsibilities that would inevitably transform the institution and how it saw both itself and the other political assemblies of the day.

Exploring Irish-Scottish connections in the period 1603–60, this book brings important new perspectives to the study of the early Stuart state. Acknowledging the pivotal role of the Hiberno-Scottish world, it identifies some of the limits of England’s Anglicising influence in the northern and western ‘British Isles’ and the often slight basis on which the Stuart pursuit of a new ‘British’ consciousness operated. Regarding the Anglo-Scottish relationship, it was chiefly in Ireland that the English and Scots intermingled after 1603, with a variety of consequences, often destabilising. The importance of the Gaelic sphere in Irish-Scottish connections also receives much greater attention here than in previous accounts. This Gaedhealtacht played a central role in the transmission of religious radicalism, both Catholic and Protestant, in Ireland and Scotland, ultimately leading to political crisis and revolution within the British Isles.

This book is about the transformation of England’s trade and government finances in the mid-seventeenth century, a revolution that destroyed Ireland. In 1642 a small group of merchants, the ‘Adventurers for Irish land’, raised an army to conquer Ireland but sent it instead to fight for parliament in England. Meeting secretly at Grocers Hall in London from 1642 to 1660, they laid the foundations of England’s empire and modern fiscal state. But a dispute over their Irish land entitlements led them to reject Cromwell’s Protectorate and plot to restore the monarchy. This is the first book to chart the relentless rise of the Adventurers and their profound political influence. It is essential reading for students of Britain and Ireland in the mid-seventeenth century, the origins of England’s empire and the Cromwellian land settlement.

The Irish parliament was both the scene of frequent political battles and an important administrative and legal element of the state machinery of early modern Ireland. This institutional study looks at how parliament dispatched its business on a day-to-day basis. It takes in major areas of responsibility such as creating law, delivering justice, conversing with the executive and administering parliamentary privilege. Its ultimate aim is to present the Irish parliament as one of many such representative assemblies emerging from the feudal state and into the modern world, with a changing set of responsibilities that would inevitably transform the institution and how it saw both itself and the other political assemblies of the day.

In 1660 Charles II was restored to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland, but his hold on power was precarious. In particular, Ireland was fundamentally unstable - Catholics formed the majority of the population in a country where Protestantism was the established religion, a state of affairs unique in Europe. It was through the law that the restored Stuart monarchy governed its subjects and its colonial dependencies, and this book examines how Catholics engaged with and experienced English common law primarily through the eyes of Catholic clerics and Gaelic poets. It also examines how Catholics engaged with the Courts and the particular challenges they faced as lawyers. The book draws on an extensive body of primary source materials, including Irish-language poetry and little-used archival material relating to elite Catholic families.

Ireland and the Renaissance court is an interdisciplinary collection of essays exploring Irish and English courts, courtiers and politics in the early modern period, c. 1450-1650. Chapters are contributed by both established and emergent scholars working in the fields of history, literary studies, and philology. They focus on Gaelic cúirteanna, the indigenous centres of aristocratic life throughout the medieval period; on the regnal court of the emergent British empire based in London at Whitehall; and on Irish participation in the wider world of European elite life and letters. Collectively, they expand the chronological limits of ‘early modern’ Ireland to include the fifteenth century and recreate its multi-lingual character through exploration of its English, Irish and Latin archives. This volume is an innovative effort at moving beyond binary approaches to English-Irish history by demonstrating points of contact as well as contention.

This book offers important new insights into the history and culture of the Gaelic-speaking world from the mid-fifteenth century through to the reign of James VI and I. Throughout this period, the reach of the English and Scottish crowns within these western regions was limited. The initiative lay with local communities and royal power was contingent upon negotiating with well-established and largely autonomous aristocratic lineages. Moreover, events within this western world could exert a powerful, often unpredictable, influence upon the affairs of the wider archipelago. Using a series of case studies, this collection examines the evolving relationship between Ireland and Scotland in rich detail. It demonstrates how this world interacted with the encroaching English and Scottish states and underlines the importance of paying closer attention to this neglected area of Irish and British history.

The crisis that befell Ireland in the 1640s has always fascinated historians. This volume of essays presents cutting-edge research on various aspects of the Irish wars, notably regionalism, the nature of English interventions, popular politics and the problems of allegiance, authority and legitimacy in church and state. The chapters include studies of the earl of Cork in Munster, the earl of Clanricarde in Connacht and Lord Montgomery in Ulster, as well as the Confederate Catholic engagement with popular politics. The role of the marquess of Ormond, the Irish Parliament and the Church of Ireland are also examined in new ways, and the volume ends with a fresh look at the war of words between Oliver Cromwell and the Catholic Church. Ireland in crisis presents a very different view of the period that challenges existing assumptions. It will appeal to lecturers, students and the general reader.