The Chief Governors: The Rise and Fall of Reform Government in Tudor Ireland 1536–1588 (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History)
Cambridge University Press, 2/2/1995
EAN 9780521461764, ISBN10: 0521461766
Hardcover, 344 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
This book offers an extended reinterpretation of English policy in Ireland over the sixteenth century. It seeks to show that the major conflicts between Tudor governors and native lords which characterised the period were not the result of a deliberate Tudor strategy of confrontation, but arose from a failed experiment in legal reform and cultural assimilation which had been applied with remarkable success elsewhere in the Tudor dominions. The book identifies a distinct administrative style which evolved in Irish government in the mid-sixteenth century under a complex set of pressures acting on the would-be reformers both in Ireland and at the Tudor court, and argues that it was this highly centralised and intensely activist mode of government that undermined the aims of reform policy and provoked alienation and hostility.
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Prologue
Ireland in the wake of the Kildare rebellion, 1536
Part I. The Course of Reform Government, 1536–1578
1. Reform as process
the viceroyalties of Lord Leonard Grey and Sir Anthony St Leger, 1536–1547
2. Ireland and the mid-Tudor crisis, 1547–1556
3. Reform by programme
the viceroyalties of the earl of Sussex, 1556–1565
4. Reform on contract
the viceroyalties of Sir Henry Sidney, 1566–1578
Interlude
government in Ireland, 1536–1579
Part II. The Impact of Reform Government, 1556–1583
5. Reform government and the feudal magnates
6. Reform government and the community of the Pale
7. Reform government and Gaelic Ireland
Epilogue
reform in crisis
the viceroyalty of Sir John Perrot, 1584–1588
Bibliography
Index.