Tudor Ireland Research Articles

Women, Marriage and Sex in Early Tudor Ireland: Evidence from an Irish Act Book

Preserved among the so-called ‘Armagh registers’ is an act book of the consistory and metropolitan court of Armagh that was compiled in the early sixteenth century. Its fortuitous survival facilitates a systematic study of how an Irish church court processed litigation concerning women's marriages or other sexual relationships, and their sexual reputations, and in doing so reveals a great deal about important aspects of the lives of women in early Tudor Ireland.

Book Review: Promoting ‘English Civility’ in Tudor Ireland: Ideology and the Rhetoric of Difference by Carla Ellen Lessing

Book Review: <i>Promoting ‘English Civility’ in Tudor Ireland: Ideology and the Rhetoric of Difference</i> by Carla Ellen Lessing

Promoting ‘English civility’ in Tudor Ireland: ideology and the rhetoric of difference. By Carla Lessing. Pp 256. Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag. 2021. €28.

Promoting ‘English civility’ in Tudor Ireland: ideology and the rhetoric of difference. By Carla Lessing. Pp 256. Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag. 2021. €28.

Women and the Reformation in Tudor Ireland

This paper addresses a major historical lacuna by highlighting some of the ways through which women helped to shape Irish responses to the English Reformation in Ireland. It reveals that women were often key to a web of contacts linking English resistance to the Tudors’ reformations to Irish resistance. It affirms that women played a significant role in the Reformation in Tudor Ireland, not least of all in its ultimate failure. Because virtually no Irish women became Protestants in the sixteenth century, though a small number of Irish men was converted, no self-perpetuating indigenous community of Irish Protestants was generated.

"Almighty Dirt": A Report on "Caliban's Mirror: The 2022 Wilde and Joyce Symposium," Trinity College Dublin, 5-7 May 2022

"Almighty Dirt":A Report on "Caliban's Mirror: The 2022 Wilde and Joyce Symposium," Trinity College Dublin, 5-7 May 2022 James Green For the first time in around three years, I attended an in-person conference. Instead of an abrupt transition from the world of online symposia, this move into the reality of dear dirty Dublin felt, thankfully, smooth and natural. The first thing to say about "Caliban's Mirror: The 2022 Wilde and Joyce Symposium" is that the conference could easily not have happened at all. Obstacles facing speakers included visa problems and an ongoing global pandemic, and panels as advertised on the website had to be changed as and when needs arose, calling for altruism from one attendee, Jinan Ashraf, who volunteered to move her paper on Joyce's influence on Indian modernism to one of the final panels. That the conference went ahead at all is due to the heroic efforts of its organizers, Casey Lawrence and Graham Price, with assistance from Sam Slote, who managed to put it together while not being in the country, for example, and even picked up a dislocated knee right on the eve of the conference. The second thing to note is that, despite being the first conference to focus specifically on the connections between Oscar Wilde and James Joyce, it felt entirely right that such a comparison be made. In fact, multiple attendees noted almost immediately that it is surprising such a conference had not happened sooner. Joyce treated the topic of Wilde in his Trieste lecture "La Poetà di Salome" and his A Portrait echoes, at least in title, Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray. The two cultivated a dandyish public persona and foregrounded questions of aesthetics in their work. In light of the difficulties raised by the conference gods, all who attended remain grateful to the organizers and fate itself to allow us to talk about this subject at length. The conference also was marred by the shocking loss of John Paul Riquelme, who was due to give a fascinating paper on Wilde's use of Platonic dialogues in his critical essays, echoed in Joyce's "Scylla and Charybdis." The abstract he submitted is available to view on the conference website, making it likely his final published work. Noting his generosity and enthusiasm, Graham and Casey fondly dedicated the conference to his memory. But his paper showed the richness and queerness of the comparisons to be made between these two bodies of work. On the first day, there was a panel on such queer comparisons: Michael F. Davis queered the complex genealogy of "The Dead" by looking at Wilde's and Anatole France's depictions of Judea in Salomé and The Procurator of Judea, Maureen de Leo considered Wilde's and Joyce's shared silences over homosexuality, while Tim Ziaukas and [End Page 404] Christopher Wells both offered particularly fruitful, searching, and witty readings of Buck Mulligan via Wilde. This panel set the tone of much of the conference's proceedings––rigorous and humorous, politically charged and pleasurable. Another vital theme of the first day was exile. Adrian Howlett, James Green, and Emma Marns, who shared her first-ever conference paper, considered the various routes into Joyce and Wilde's shared status as exiles. One undeniably positive facet of the conference was how welcoming an environment it was for graduate students and early-career researchers. Their papers sat productively alongside those of more senior colleagues, who responded warmly to the insights of junior colleagues. The first day's roster evinces such a range. These talks were then followed by Margot Gayle Backus's enthralling keynote: "James Joyce and Oscar Wilde: Modernism and the Politics of Punitive Child Removal." Spurred by political fury at the practice of child removal as a systematic form of social engineering, from Tudor Ireland to Francisco Franco's Spain and more recent pink scares in the United States, Backus considered with wit, attentiveness, and fluency the shared anxieties of Wilde and Joyce over the loss of children (which, for Wilde, became an all-too-grim reality in his life). In Backus's reading, Joyce's reaction to Wilde's fall became most pronounced...

“Saluage soyl, far from Parnasso Mount”: Spenser and Shakespeare in contemporary Irish writing

AbstractThis essay studies the literary politics of the reception of Spenser and Shakespeare in contemporary Irish writing, theatre, and public culture. Often conceived as a project of recovery or restitution, or as a niche interest for urban élites, the mixed fortunes and contrasting politics of Shakespeare and Spenser in 20th‐ and 21st‐century Ireland testify to the still sensitive politics of settlement and plantation, as well as the blind spots of nationalism and the national model of Irish literature. Focussing primarily on the current century, this essay traces crucial lines of reception back to W. B. Yeats and the Irish literary revival, pausing over Frank McGuinness's important play Mutabilitie (1997), which dared to imagine and provocatively recast both Shakespeare and Spenser's habitation in Ireland. That project found little support, just months before the Good Friday agreement was signed, but it stands over and guides a significant body of work in Irish drama and poetry in ways that have yet to be fully unpacked. Yet the contrast remains between the hero and the whipping boy, a congenial Shakespeare and a cruel Spenser, in literary engagements with Tudor Ireland. Although Shakespeare has generally been heralded as an enabling or emancipatory figure for Irish writers, this essay proposes that a richer and more radical politics can be accessed by the thornier route of confronting Spenser's place in Irish culture and history. The essay concludes by outlining a recent flourishing of interest in Spenser that seeks to exploit his potential for Irish culture and politics in these new, more honest but more challenging ways.

A Frank Exchange of Views: Communicating through Violence in Ireland, 1565-1610

The introduction of agriculture to supplant the pastoral society of Ireland was at the heart of the civilizing mission in Ireland after 1530. But the altered landscape and material culture associated with this change in land use soon served as new points of cultural conflict, with hostility and resistance from both sides directed at objects as well as symbols and members of the two cultures. The emerging violence in Tudor Ireland will be read here as a type of text for communicating difference.

‘Reform’ treatises on Tudor Ireland, 1537–1599. Edited by David Heffernan. Pp xxix+381. Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission. 2016. €40.

‘Reform’ treatises on Tudor Ireland, 1537–1599. Edited by David Heffernan. Pp xxix+381. Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission. 2016. €40.

The English Reformation in Dublin

ABSTRACTAs monarch of the lordship and (since 1541) kingdom of Ireland, King Henry VIII and his successors imposed the same ecclesiastical and religious policies they devised for England on Dublin, the most English city in Tudor Ireland. Far-reaching changes were effected to quite a remarkable degree. Yet the English Reformation failed to take root in the Irish city. This paper explores both the course of the Reformation in the capital of English Ireland and the reasons for its general failure. It also highlights some implications of Dublin’s experience relevant to continuing debates in English Reformation studies.

Elizabeth's Reformation in the Irish Pale

This paper is focused on Elizabeth's Reformation in the Irish Pale around Dublin, the key religious battleground in Tudor Ireland. It highlights the strength of opposition to Elizabeth's religious settlement from the start of her reign. It shows in stark terms that Ireland experienced a Reformation virtually without reformers, and suggests that that was a major reason for its failure. The contrasting experiences of England and the Pale suggest, in turn, that revisionist historians have underestimated the progress of Protestantism in England before Elizabeth's reign.

Ennobling Reform in Tudor Ireland

Ennobling Reform in Tudor Ireland

:A European Frontier Elite: The Nobility of the English Pale in Tudor Ireland, 1496–1566. The Formation of Europe 4

:<i>A European Frontier Elite: The Nobility of the English Pale in Tudor Ireland, 1496–1566. The Formation of Europe 4</i>

A European Frontier Elite: The Nobility of the English Pale in Tudor Ireland, 1496–1566, by Gerald Power Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660, ed. Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron

A European Frontier Elite: The Nobility of the English Pale in Tudor Ireland, 1496–1566, by Gerald Power Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660, ed. Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron

The deputy's defence: Sir William Fitzwilliam's Apology on the outbreak of the Nine Years War in Ireland

The Apology of Sir William Fitzwilliam, Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1588 to 1594, offers a revealing insight into the origins of the Nine Years War, otherwise known as Tyrone’s Rebellion, which convulsed Ireland between 1594 and 1603. The Apology was addressed to Queen Elizabeth to allay suspicions that corrupt and high-handed dealings during Fitzwilliam’s governorship had provoked the war. It deals with key events*the execution of Hugh Roe MacMahon, the revolt of Hugh Maguire, the escape of Red Hugh O’Donnell*and, most importantly, reflects Fitzwilliam’s view of his relations with Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone. The prefatory analysis, far from revealing the Apology as some truth-telling end-of-life confession, exposes a belated, carefully manipulated attempt to rescue the author’s damaged reputation. This was under threat from the earl of Essex and his faction following the death of Fitzwilliam’s patron Lord Burghley in 1598. Introduction: prefatory analysis of the Apology The Apology of Sir William Fitzwilliam offers the lord deputy’s perspective on the origins of Hugh O’Neill’s revolt against the English crown in Ireland, which broke out during his second term as chief governor between 1588 and 1594. Sir William Fitzwilliam (1526 99) was Elizabeth’s most experienced Irish official, having served widely in treasury and executive positions. He composed this document towards the end of his life when England’s fortunes in Ireland were at a low point. Although essentially an attempt at exoneration, it contains useful information not available in the regular state papers. In Tyrone’s Rebellion I * Author’s e-mail: H.Morgan@ucc.ie doi: 10.3318/PRIAC.2014.114.01 1 I wish to thank Professor Paul Hammer of the University of Colorado for his helpful comments on this paper. I also wish to acknowledge the financial support of the Programme for Research in Third-level Institutions. 2 For William Fitzwilliam see Richard Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors (3 vols, Dublin, 1885 90), ii, 207 306 and iii, 195 241; Robert Dunlop, ‘Fitzwilliam, Sir William (1526 1599)’, Dictionary of national biography (63 vols, Oxford, 1885 1901), xix, 232 5; Mary Ann Lyons, ‘Fitzwilliam, Sir William (1526 1599)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (60 vols, Oxford, 2004), xix, 965 8. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Vol. 114C, 181 214 # 2014 Royal Irish Academy This content downloaded from 207.46.13.51 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 06:04:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms referred to this document as a memoir. Yet it is not a sophisticated propaganda puff in the manner of Sir Henry Sidney’s memoir of 1583; it more closely 3 Hiram Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion: the outbreak of the Nine Years War in Tudor Ireland (Woodbridge, 1993), 62, 148, 201, on Fitzwilliam see especially chaps 4 and 7. Hiram Morgan

The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations (review)

Reviewed by: The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations James Murray The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations. By Henry A. Jefferies.(Dublin: Four Courts Press. Distrib. by ISBS, Portland, OR. 2010. Pp. 302. $70.00. ISBN 978-1-846-82050-2.). Henry Jefferies's aim in his new book is "to put religion back at the heart of the on-going debate on the Reformation in Ireland" (p. 12). This is a laudable [End Page 794] objective, and he deserves commendation for reminding us that Ireland's Reformation experience is unintelligible unless due consideration is given to the religious convictions of its sixteenth-century inhabitants. It is disappointing, then, to discover that his own treatment of religion is self-consciously regressive and that ultimately he presents an account of the religious developments of the period that closely resembles the traditional and, prior to the 1970s, predominant Catholic-nationalist narrative of the failure of the Reformation in Ireland. Given the rhetorical method employed, this outcome is inevitable. Jefferies pits himself against the "revisionist successors" of the older generation of Irish Catholic/nationalist historians, who, he argues, have "tended to project their own secularist mentalities onto the past and deny religion its significance as an important influence in Tudor times"(p. 11). As a remedy, he elects throughout his book to set those modes of inquiry and argument that do not focus specifically on religion in opposition to those that do, suggesting, repeatedly, that the former are necessarily inferior when they are utilized to explore any aspect of the history of the Reformation in Ireland. This uncompromisingly dualistic approach is particularly marked in the final chapters of the book, where the author offers an analysis of the series of rebellions that erupted in Ireland from the late 1570s. Here, the historians who have advanced political, constitutional, or economic explanations for the outbreak of the rebellions are successively dismissed, generally because they are adjudged to have "played down," or "failed to appreciate" the religious dimensions of the revolts (pp. 208, 278). Jefferies's implicit rejection of the possibility that secular modes of inquiry may offer useful perspectives on the religious history of Tudor Ireland is symptomatic of a more general tendency to simplify or reduce any argument, and the supporting evidence, that complicates that history. Consequently, far from putting religion back at the center of the debate on Ireland's Reformation, he merely reframes that debate as a closed and problemless entity, which enables him to create a clear, untroubled space in which to establish his own narrative. That narrative is ultimately revealed in the final part of the book in a committed and lengthy description of pan-Irish resistance to the Elizabethan settlement. Familiar motifs emerge as this narrative unfolds: a steadfast Irish communal attachment to traditional Catholicism, the buttressing effect of a steadily emerging Counter-Reformation Church, and the ineffectiveness of a weak and corrupt Church of Ireland. His conclusion—that these factors led inexorably to the failure of the Reformation—is reminiscent of historians such as M.V. Ronan and Robin Dudley Edwards not only in terms of the final judgment but also in regard to the evidence used to support it, namely, the series of despatches preserved in the Irish State Papers in the National Archives of the United Kingdom, which were penned by ecclesiastical and state officials and which lament the obdurate nature of Irish religious conservatism. [End Page 795] This approach is unsatisfying because it not only accepts uncritically the evidence for the existence of an undifferentiated, communal attachment to Catholicism but also endeavors to construct a late-medieval wellspring for the phenomenon built on an equally questionable evidential base. In the opening section of the book, the Irish Church is portrayed as a healthier and more coherent, island-wide entity than many contemporaries were prepared to admit, on the basis of a dubious simplification of the island's complex politics, culture, geography,and economy; through his avoidance of contemporary evidence detailing the widespread lay despoliation of ecclesiastical property; and through some extravagant claims made for a relatively modest renewal of the late-medieval Church's physical infrastructure. Although Jefferies's account certainly challenges the old...

WRITING ABOUT VIOLENCE IN THE TUDOR KINGDOMS

ABSTRACTDespite differing historiographical traditions, the histories of Tudor England and Ireland often face similar problems, not least how best to narrate and analyse episodes of state and non-state violence in a satisfying way. Latterly, sophisticated models for dealing with this have emerged in treatments of English popular politics. These works succeed in eschewing both inherited ideas of English exceptionalism and the ‘enclosure’ of social history. They also offer a compelling and holistic view of social and political interactions in the past from a number of vantage points. Many recent treatments of sixteenth-century Irish history, by contrast, have centred on atrocity and even genocide. This narrower focus does not preclude important scholarship, but its thematic and methodological limitations hamper that scholarship's broader non-polemical value. The appreciation of Tudor Ireland's status as a political society and the close scrutiny of that political society and its actors is a necessity. It offers just as promising an embarkation point for sophisticated and interesting studies as the study of Tudor English popular politics.

English Poetry in Cromwellian Ireland

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)David a Prophet, yet in Verse excels:'Twas ECCLESIASTES made the Canticles.1The Cromwellian invasion of Ireland has not been famed for the value of its poetry. And yet, like 'David a Prophet', some of the soldiers, civil servants and divines that have been identified with and resisted the Cromwellian invasion and administration of Ireland did produce a discernable body of religiously orientated verse. The best overview of the writing produced during this period has been provided in Andrew Carpenter's groundbreaking anthology, Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland (2003), but its selection of a dozen or so examples of material from the 1650s could represent only a small fraction of the decade's poetic output, and, necessarily, could not offer a broader context for its production and reception. The recent edition of Faithful Teate's Ter Tria (1658), edited by Angelina Lynch (2007), reminded scholars that material produced in this period did make significant demands upon its readers and usefully highlighted its complexity, its value, and its relation to the wider English tradition. Nevertheless, the thematic characteristics of the poetry of Cromwellian Ireland can be distinguished from that of earlier periods - most of all in its engagement with the tumult of its contexts, the 'strange alteration of affaires' in the aftermath of the regicide and the English Parliament's campaign to subjugate Ireland.2 This article will outline a context for this body of writing within the changing mentalities of Cromwellian Ireland, and will offer a new model for the interpretation of such principal works as Ter Tria, alongside a reading of other texts, which emerged out of even as they shaped the experiences of invasion and administration in Cromwellian Ireland.IOf course, poetry in English had been written in Ireland long before the Cromwellian invasion: John Derricke and Edmund Spenser are just two of its better-known exponents. But this English-language poetry was not uniquely Protestant in its orientation - Richard Stanihurst, uncle of the Renaissance polymath and Protestant polemicist James Ussher, combined his interest in writing metaphysical lyrics with the literary defence of the Catholic faith at the end of the sixteenth century. While it crossed confessional boundaries, this English-language poetry rarely moved beyond its coterie circulation. But a native literary culture did begin to appear. In the 1630s, Dublin felt like 'a city under the distant but perceptible influence of English-language Renaissance culture ... a city which thought of itself as an intellectual centre'.3 Its new cultural confidence emerged with its first printing of poetry, though it would be another generation and several political revolutions later before those publications appeared in anything other than short runs. The slow development of the publication of poetry can be partly explained by the difficulty of securing access to printing presses. When the teaching staff of Trinity College combined their efforts to produce Musarum Lachrymae (1630), a collection of verse elegising Catherine Fenton, the second wife of Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, they benefited from access to the printing facilities of the official stationers' office in Dublin, but most poetry written by Protestants in Ireland continued to be published in London.4 By the 1650s, responding to the new need for the rapid and widespread dissemination of news, printing presses had been established in several of the major Irish towns. But poets' access to publication did not markedly improve: these presses were strictly controlled, and were most often used for official business.5But, throughout the 1650s, and on both sides of the confessional division, English verse published in Ireland did make occasional appearances, and in all manner of literary contexts. At the beginning of the decade, Frances Cook, wife of the regicide judge John Cook, succeeded in finding a publisher for her verse in Cork, though her work, like that of her husband, was later reprinted in London. …

Interpreters and the politics of translation and traduction in sixteenth-century Ireland

The story of late Tudor Ireland is, in part, a story of language. The political and military developments that brought New English and native Irish into a closer and increasingly violent proximity also brought two languages into confrontation. The issue of language difference became caught up in the wider conflict: the Irish language joined glibs, brehons and pastoral nomadism as yet another element in the Elizabethans’ dystopic assessment of Gaelic Ireland; in turn, the promotion of English — and the linguistic colonisation which that entailed — assumed its place in their agenda of conquest. Leaving aside larger questions of policy and ideology, language itself — and the experience of language difference — was part of the texture of that encounter. Yet the question of precisely how exchanges across the language frontier were managed has been largely ignored. The misunderstandings between Elizabethan newcomers and the Gaelic Irish were, at their simplest level, literal.

Education and Religious Identity in Early Modern Ireland

This article explores the role of education in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in early modern Ireland. Set within the framework of ecclesiastical change, Tudor and Stuart attempts to promote educational reform at all levels were also an integral part of the programme of socio-political engineering designed to bring about the anglicisation of the island. Yet for much of the sixteenth century, activists of both the Protestant and Catholic faiths shared a common background of Christian humanist ideas and exhibited similar strategies for the attainment of religious objectives, including the training of priests. Chronic weaknesses in the state's administrative machinery, however, coupled with the lack of material resources in the localities militated against efforts to build on private and municipal initiatives for providing schools and catechesis. And differences in the ideological approaches of protagonists of reform did eventually obtrude upon a fairly ecumenical climate for educational innovation in the Elizabethan period. The struggle to found a native university which challenged prominent scholars and churchmen in the later sixteenth century encapsulates the theological and practical difficulties which beset educational advances in Tudor Ireland. Attention will focus on the corps of educators who may have proved to be extremely influential in the exodus of scholars to continental Catholic colleges. Ultimately Irish higher education polarised about the divines and printing presses of Trinity College, Dublin, culturally an English, Protestant bastion, established to foster evangelisation in the Anglican church, and the overseas Irish Catholic seminaries such as Louvain whence were disseminated works of catechesis, as well as history and hagiraphy, for the Counter-Reformation. The forging of religious identity in close association with either colonialism or nationalism took place in the context of experiences of opposing educational programmes.

‘THE CRUELL PRESSURE OF AN ENRAGED, BARBAROUS PEOPLE’: IRISH AND ENGLISH IDENTITY IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY POLICY AND PROPAGANDA

Seventeenth-century English men and women, caught in the upheaval of the Civil War, sought to understand what it was to be English and sought to grasp England's proper role in the world. One of the ways in which they did this was through their encounters with other people. The Irish had a long history of interaction with the English, but in the middle of the seventeenth century their role in defining Englishness became acute. Late Tudor and early Jacobean commentaries on Ireland had stressed the superiority of English culture while acknowledging some virtues of Ireland and its people that would make it amenable to beneficial transformation by the English. In the middle of the century, occasioned by the events of the 1641 uprising, this ameliorative view of the Irish gave way to the view that English and Irish were incompatible. Earlier studies have emphasized the role of religion in the discordant relationship between the two peoples in the seventeenth century. This essay maintains that the shift in attitude had as much to do with ethnicity as it did with religion and considers the central role of John Temple and his treatise The Irish rebellion in changing English attitudes on both a national and local level. The study suggests that Temple's view became the dominant one for more than 200 years because of the demographic changes within the Irish community in London and puritan concerns about a godly community that occurred at the time Temple set forth his ideas.