Turning Ireland English
By Professor Steven Ellis
The question of how to govern Ireland was one of the most difficult and sensitive issues of
Elizabeth's reign. By the time of her death, the country had forged a new and distinct identity of its
own. But what kind of policies did her government pursue and how did the people of Ireland
react?
A land of contrasts
For Elizabeth, Ireland was very much 'an unwelcome inheritance'. The island witnessed the last
private battle between Tudor magnates (the earls of Desmond and Ormond at Affane, Co.
Waterford, 1565), and was also the destination of the largest army to leave England during the
reign (17,300 men, 1599). Yet the conquest of Gaelic Ireland was long unintended, even though it
constituted the Tudor regime's most ambitious undertaking (entailing the thorough Anglicisation
of government and society) and the only significant addition to Tudor territory.
Ireland in 1558 was divided politically and culturally into English and Gaelic parts. The
predominantly Gaelic west and north had a scanty, shifting population, with scattered, largely
impermanent settlements, and a predominantly pastoral economy. A common legal system, social
and cultural institutions also stretched across the North Channel into the Scottish highlands and
islands, imparting some measure of unity. Yet Gaelic politics were intensely local, with the
numerous rival clans and chieftaincies. This was, according to English officials, 'a land of war',
inhabited by a rude and savage people ('the wild Irish') living in bogs and mountains.
'...the conquest of Gaelic Ireland was long unintended, even though it constituted the Tudor
regime's most ambitious undertaking...'
The smaller, more 'civil', 'Englishry' (the English Pale around Dublin and the south) contained
numerous English-style towns and villages and prided itself on its Englishness and loyalty. Yet
Gaelic practices and speech were spreading among those of English descent (the future Old
English) and the costs of defending the queen's subjects there had lately escalated alarmingly. The
troops were paid in 'harp groats' (heavily debased English-style coins, distinguishable by harps on
the reverse), but administrative costs still exceeded income by ￡25,000 - 10 per cent of
Elizabeth's total revenues. Reflecting the militarisation of society, moreover, English landowners
still lived in defended towerhouses (outside the towns and the inner Pale), their tenants (and many
Gaelic clansmen) in wattle and daub cabins.
Options for reform
Elizabeth's first governor, the earl of Sussex, remarked candidly that he had often wished Ireland
'to be sunk in the sea'. Withdrawal was unthinkable, however, both for reasons of prestige, and
because of the danger that France, or later Spain, might establish control. Nor was there any glory
or profit in conquering a wilderness: conquest, while feasible, would require a substantial army to
drive the Irish out of their homes in woods and bogs, and an enormous effort subsequently to hold
the country with garrisons and colonies.
'...conquest, while feasible, would require a substantial army to drive the Irish out of their homes
in woods and bogs...'
Faced with these unacceptable alternatives, Elizabeth's father, King Henry VIII, had sought an
economical middle way to bring the island under English rule. Declaring himself king of Ireland
(1541), Henry had tried to cajole the Gaelic chiefs 'by sober ways, politic drifts and amiable
persuasions' to accept English rule, offering them secure titles to their land and a role in
government in return for their abandonment of Gaelic law,language and customs in favour of
English ways. This strategy for transforming Gaelic warlords into English landlords ('surrender
and regrant') remained a central plank of Tudor reform throughout Elizabeth's reign. Yet progress
was slow, despite initial optimism when O'Brien and O'Neill had visited court to receive their new
titles as earls of Thomond and Tyrone (1542-3).
Under Edward VI and Mary, English financial and military subventions were stepped up in a bid
to force the pace, but increased coercion proved counterproductive, and the growing levels of
violence alienated the local Englishry. In particular, an experiment with limited colonisation in
Leix-Offaly proved disastrously expensive, requiring large garrisons to repel the expropriated
O'Mores and O'Connors after the shiring of their lordships as Queen's and King's Counties (1557).
Elizabeth's policy
Elizabeth's basic instinct - particularly following peace and the withdrawal of French troops from
Scotland (1559-60) - was to delay, so saving expenses. Only in the face of a grave emergency - a
major rebellion or, later, the growing threat of Spanish intervention - would she authorise vigorous
measures to protect English interests. Such a policy (if it can be so described) pleased no-one.
The border chieftaincies remained restive, fearing expropriation by English captains intruded to
control them; New English officials and captains sought to establish themselves as landed gentry
and grew frustrated at Elizabeth's mild dealings with the Irishry; Old English landowners were
alienated by the burden of maintaining an enlarged English army and the abrasive conduct of army
captains; and the queen's ministers in England were perplexed both at the costs of governing a
remote borderland and at the ineffectiveness in Ireland of traditional Tudor methods of
consolidating crown control over outlying parts. Since the 1530s, Wales and the English north had
been reformed by extending the reach of English law and local government (abolishing feudal
franchises and reducing 'overmighty subjects') so as to promote 'good rule' and 'English civility'.
Yet in Ireland the military frontier frustrated similar attempts to enlarge the English Pale.
'...political considerations generally took priority over religious conformity...'
The Reformation crisis also fuelled the government's fears about rebellion in Ireland. All three
borderlands were 'backward in religion', but the queen feared that a crackdown on Catholic dissent
as urged by her bishops and ministers might unite religious and political dissidents, driving
Catholic loyalists into the arms of Gaelic rebels like Shane O'Neill (1559-67) who was intriguing
with Scotland and France. Elizabeth personally expressed a desire to learn Gaelic, and demanded a
Gaelic translation of the New Testament from her bishops - in line with the Protestant insistence
on the use of the vernacular in church services - but others feared that Gaelic services would
undermine the government's programme to make Ireland English. Thus, political considerations
generally took priority over religious conformity: Gaelic translations of the Bible and Book of
Common Prayer only appeared after Elizabeth's death. Nonetheless, the new Protestant ingredient
in English identity (God's 'elect nation') also undermined acceptance as Englishmen of Ireland's
Catholic Old English.
New initiatives
Elizabethan policy towards Ireland was predominantly reactive, but there were also some new
initiatives to extend English rule. Perhaps the most successful was the establishment in Connaught
and Munster in 1569-70 of regional councils (or presidencies), along the lines of those in Wales
and the English north. Initially, their intrusion antagonised local magnates, particularly in Munster
where the earl of Desmond's cousin, James Fitzmaurice, tried to whip up Catholic opposition and
appealed unsuccessfully for Spanish support. Later, however, the councils became self-financing
through the device of composition.
Composition involved, in Gaelic parts, the commutation of the chief's right to take up supplies for
his household and quarter his kerne and galloglass on his subjects for defence. This practice,
known as coign and livery, had also spread to outlying English parts. Its English equivalent,
purveyance for the army and governor's household, was also commuted, so reducing the queen's
overall charges but generating fierce resentment in the Pale where it was seen as a new,
unconstitutional, system of military taxation, levied without the subject's consent.
'...the theory and practice of English government in Elizabethan Ireland diverged alarmingly.'
Even more disruptive were the experiments at colonisation, notably in east Ulster (in 1572-3), and
the Munster plantation from 1584 which smacked of ethnic cleansing. Originally, Gaelic chiefs
like MacMurrough Kavanagh had tolerated small colonies of Englishmen on ex-monastic land to
guard harbours and fords and civilise the natives. Yet, as with the army, the government had the
greatest difficulty in controlling would-be conquistadores. English captains and colonists like
Humphrey Gilbert and Walter Raleigh were less interested in teaching the natives the benefits of
English civility than in making their fortunes by goading them into hopeless rebellion and then
grabbing their land. Accordingly, the theory and practice of English government in Elizabethan
Ireland diverged alarmingly. The queen and council in England aimed gradually to strengthen
Tudor rule by making English law and local government more widely available and treating
Gaelic chiefs and Old English lords as good subjects. English captains on the ground, often with
Dublin's collusion, preferred a military solution, keeping the country under martial law to crush
opposition and extend English rule by force.
Responses to conquest
The result was a gradual escalation of violence and atrocities, particularly from 1579 when
originally distinct strands of dissent - religious and political, Gaelic and Old English - began to
coalesce. The Desmond rebellion in Munster (1579-83), for instance, coincided with an Old
English Catholic rising in the Pale led by Viscount Baltinglass, supported by Gaelic chiefs,
notably Feagh MacHugh O'Byrne; a further Pale conspiracy; and two minor landings of Italian
and Spanish troops. The risings were brutally suppressed, with massive military reinforcements
from England, and Munster was left a wasteland.
The Ulster confederacy led by Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, during the Nine Years War
(1594-1603) was even more serious. His faith-and-fatherland nationalism attracted little overt Old
English support, but Tyrone assembled a modern army capable of matching Elizabeth's army in
the field. Following the English defeat at the Yellow Ford (1598), revolt spread to Connaught and
Munster, and a Spanish landing of 4,000 troops at Kinsale (1601) left the issue very much in doubt.
With Elizabeth facing bankruptcy, 'harp groats' reappeared to pay the army, in which 19 per cent
of England's available manpower was eventually committed. The War eventually cost Elizabeth c.
￡2 million.
' The risings were brutally suppressed, with massive military reinforcements from England...'
Elizabeth thus paid a heavy price for her parsimonious and irresolute approach to Irish affairs and
her inability to exercise effective control over her ministers there. Ireland was pacified, though
partly destroyed, and the manner of the conquest united Gaelic and Old English in new forms of
Irish Catholic nationalism (v. both the Protestant New English and Scottish Gaeldom).
Paradoxically, English rule now enjoyed less indigenous support than in 1558 and depended
heavily on financial and military support from England.
Find out more
Books
Ireland in the Age of the Tudors by Prof Steven Ellis, Addison Wesley Longman Ltd (London,
1998)
Elizabeth's Irish Wars by C. Falls (Constable and Co. 1996)
Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland edited by R.F. Foster (Oxford University Press, 1989)
About the author
Professor Steven Ellis is a Tudor specialist, teaching history through both English and Gaelic at
the National University of Ireland, Galway. His many works on English, Irish, and British history
include the standard survey of Tudor Ireland, Ireland in the age of the Tudors (Addison Wesley
Longman Ltd, London 1998).