Böcker av David Heffernan

In the sixteenth century the Duhallow region of north-west Co. Cork was one of the most indisputably Irish parts of Ireland. Characterized geographically by the mountainous boggy lands of Sliabh Luachra, the region was dominated by the lordships of the MacDonogh-MacCarthys, the MacAuliffes, the O'Callaghans, and the O'Keeffes. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, these lordships had largely been dismantled and the region was increasingly dominated by New English settler families such as the Boyles, Percivals, and Aldworths residing around new towns at Newmarket and Kanturk. This study charts the transformation of early modern Duhallow by examining the crisis of Irish lordship in the region under the Tudors and the decline and fall of the lordships during the early Stuart period. In doing so, it examines a microcosm of how Irish lordship was often destroyed not by direct conquest and colonisation, but by a gradual process of economic, social, and political erosion.

Ireland was conquered and gradually colonized by the Tudors during the sixteenth century. This much is clear but whether or not this was the actual goal of English policy in Ireland at that time has long been debated by historians. Debating Tudor policy in sixteenth-century Ireland examines a set of sources which provide a unique insight into English rule in Tudor Ireland. These are policy papers or treatises written at the time on how to 'reform' Ireland and bring it under greater crown control. The study constitutes the first systematic study of the approximately six-hundred such treatises to have survived. In doing so it sheds light on how the Tudors arrived at the policies they decided to implement in Ireland and examines how English officials and other parties within Ireland viewed the Irish and the country at that time.