Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Tudors & the Protestant Ascendancy
Ireland presented a particular challenge to Henry VIII (r 1509-1547), in part due to the
Anglo-Norman lords more or less unfettered power over the country, which didn't sit well
with Henry's belief in strong monarchial rule. He decreed absolute royal power over Ire-
land, but the Irish lords weren't going to take it lying down.
In 1534 the most powerful of Leinster's Anglo-Normans, 'Silken' Thomas Fitzgerald,
renounced his allegiance to the king, and Henry came at him ferociously: within a year
Fitzgerald was dead and all his lands confiscated. Henry ordered the surrender of all lands
to the English Crown and, three years later, after his spat with Rome, he dissolved the mon-
asteries and all Church lands passed to the newly constituted Anglican Church. Dublin was
declared an Anglican city and relics such as the Bachall Íosa were destroyed.
Elizabeth I (r 1558-1603) came to the throne with the same uncompromising attitude to
Ireland as her father. Ulster was the most hostile to her, with the Irish fighting doggedly un-
der the command of Hugh O'Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, but they too were finally defeated in
1603.
O'Neill's defeat signalled the end of Gaelic Ireland and the renewed colonisation of the
country through plantation. Loyal Protestants from England and Scotland were awarded the
rich agricultural, confiscated lands of Ulster, sowing the bitter seeds of division that blight
the province to this day. Unlike previous arrivals, these new colonists kept very much apart
from the native Irish, who were left disenfranchised, landless and reduced to a state of near
misery.
All the while, Dublin prospered as the bulwark of English domination and became a bas-
tion of Protestantism. A chasm developed between the 'English' city and the 'Irish' coun-
tryside, where there was continuing unrest and growing resentment. After winning the Eng-
lish Civil War, Oliver Cromwell came to Ireland to personally reassert English control and,
while Protestant Dublin was left untouched (save the use of St Patrick's Cathedral as a
stable for English horses), his troops were uncompromising in their dealing with rebellion
up and down the eastern coast.
For all their might, the Anglo-Normans' dominance was limited to a walled area surrounding what today is
loosely Greater Dublin, and was then called 'the Pale'. Beyond the Pale - a phrase that entered the English
language to mean 'beyond convention' - Ireland remained unbowed and unconquered.
