The Tudor re-conquest of Ireland took place under the English Tudor Monarchs during the 16th century. It was begun under Henry VIII, who reacted to a rebellion by the Geraldine dynasty by trying to recover English control over Ireland, which had been lost in the previous two hundred years. This process was continued by mixture of conciliation and repression until Ireland was fully under the control of the English authorities in Dublin by 1603. The conquest was complicated by the attempted imposition of English law, language and culture onto Ireland and by the parallel attempt to impose the Protestant Reformation on the Irish, who were Roman Catholics.

Ireland in 1500

Ireland in 1500 was shaped by the unfinished English conquest, carried out by Anglo-Norman barons in the 12th century. This had displaced many of the native Gaelic Irish and settled much of Ireland’s east coast with English peasants and labourers. This area became known as the Pale, the fortified area from the Wicklow mountains to Dundalk where English language and culture predominated and where English law was obeyed and enforced.

Outside of this area, authority of the English government was much more tenuous. The Anglo-Norman barons had been able to carve out fiefdoms for themselves, but not to settle them with English tenants. As a result, in the wake of Irish rebellion, Scottish invasion, Black Death and a lack of Government interest in the colony in the 14th and 15th centuries, many of the outlying English baronies returned to the control of Irish lords. Others, such as the great dynasties of Butler, Fitzgerald and Burke became effectively independent, raising their own armed forces and enforcing their own law.

Having been displaced in the early decades of the conquest the native Irish had something of a renaissance in the 14th and 15th centuries. Considerable areas of land previously held by the English were either abandoned to or overrun by the Gaelic Irish, particularly in the north and midlands. Important Irish dynasties included the O’Neills (Ui Niall) in central Ulster (Tir Eoin) flanked to their west by the O’Donnells the O’Byrnes and O’Tooles in Wicklow, the Kavanaghs in Wexford, the McCarthys and O’Sullivans in Cork and Kerry and the O’Brians in Clare. The Gaelic Irish were, for the most part, outside of English jurisdiction, maintaining their own language, social system, customs and laws. The English referred to them as "His Majesty’s Irish enemies".

Henry VIII

By 1500, English monarchs had delegated government of Ireland to the most powerful of the Anglo-Norman dynasties (the Fitzgeralds of Kildare) in order to keep the costs of the colony down and to protect the Pale. For this reason, the head of the Kildare Fitzgeralds held the position of Lord Deputy of Ireland (King’s representative in Ireland) until 1531. The problem was that the House of Kildare had become an unreliable ally, scheming with Yorkist pretenders to the English throne, signing private treaties with foreign powers, and finally rebelling after the head of their hereditary rivals, the Butlers of Ormonde, was awarded the position of Lord Deputy. Henry put down this rebellion, executed the main culprit ("Silken Thomas" Fitzgerald) and imprisoned Gearoid Og, the head of the family. But now he had to find a replacement for the Fitzgeralds to keep Ireland quiet. What Henry needed was a cost-effective new policy that protected the Pale and protected England’s vulnerable west flank from foreign invasion via Ireland. What he came up with was a policy called surrender and regrant. This extended Royal protection to all of Ireland’s elite without regard to ethnicity. In return the whole country would obey English law. All Irish lords were to officially surrender to the Crown and receive title to their lands by Royal Charter. Ireland was to be Kingdom rather a "Lordship" as previously, from 1541 on. What was intended to happen was that the Gaelic and Gaelicised upper classes would become loyal subjects and gradually become assimilated into the English aristocracy. They were granted English titles and for the fist time admitted to the Irish Parliament. Although this worked in theory, in practice, lords around Ireland accepted their new privileges but carried on as they had before. Henry’s religious Reformation caused some disquiet, but he bought off opposition by granted lands confiscated from the monasteries to Irish nobles.

Difficulties

Successive new Lord Deputies of Ireland found that actually establishing the rule of the central government was far more difficult than merely getting the lords pledge of allegiance. Successive rebellions broke out, first in Leinster, when the O’Moore and O’Connor clans were displaced to make way for the Plantation of Laois and Offally . Later, English attempts to interfere in a succession dispute in the O’Neill clan sparked a long war between the Lord Deputy Sussex and Shane O'Neill. Elsewhere, clans such as the O’Byrnes and O’Tooles continued raiding the Pale as they had always done. The most serious violence of all occurred in Munster in the 1560s ‘70s and ‘80s, when the Fitzgeralds of Kildare launched the Desmond Rebellions to try and prevent English intrusion into their territory.

Solutions

Under Elizabeth I, the English in Ireland tried a number of solutions to pacify the country. One was composition – where private armed forces were abolished, and provinces were occupied by English troops and governors called Lord Presidents. In return, the pre-eminent clans and lords were exempted from taxation and were entitled to receive rents from subordinate families and their tenants. The imposition of this settlement was marked by bitter violence, particularly in Connacht, where the MacWilliam Burkes fought a local war against the English governor Richard Bingham.

The second solution was Plantations, where areas were settled with English people, who would bring in English language and culture and who would be loyal to the English government. In the wake of the Desmond Rebellions, large swathes of land in Munster were colonised in the Munster plantation . However, the prospect of land confiscation alienated the Irish further.

Crisis

The crisis point of the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland came when the English authorities tried to extend their authority over Ulster and Hugh O'Neill -– the most powerful Irish lord in the country. O’Neill resisted with force of arms and launched what is known as the Nine Years War –- a nationwide rebellion against English rule. O’Neill enlisted the help of many lords throughout Ireland and of Spain. A Spanish invasion force was defeated at Kinsale in 1601. The rebellion was finally put down in 1603, after which English government was established throughout Ireland. O’Neill and his allies later fled Ireland in the Flight of the Earls and their lands in Ulster were confiscated and colonised in the Plantation of Ulster.

Results

The first and most important result of the conquest was the disarmament of the native Irish lordships and the establishment of English government control for the first time over the whole country. Irish culture, law and language were displaced by English language and law in state business. Many Irish lords, in particular the Gaelic Irish ones, lost their lands as a result of the Tudor conquest. Thousands of English, Scottish and Welsh settlers were introduced into the country. However, the native Irish (descended from Gaelic Irish and Old English) remained the majority landowners in the country until the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in the 1650s. As the 16th century went on the religious question grew more and more important. Rebels sought and got help from Catholic powers in Europe and justified their rebellion on religious grounds. In the 16th century, under James I, Catholics were barred from all public office. In response, the descendants of the pre-conquest population increasingly defined themselves as Irish (including the Old English) in opposition to the Protestant New English settlers.

See Also

• Plantations of Ireland
• History of Ireland
• Desmond Rebellions
• Nine Years War