The Chief Governors: The Rise and Fall of Reform Government in Tudor Ireland 1536–1588

by Ciaran Brady

• ISBN13: 9780521520041
• ISBN10: 0521520045
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-06-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	xvi
Abbreviations	xvii
Prologue: Ireland in the wake of the Kildare rebellion, 1536	1	(10)
Part 1 The course of reform government, 1536--1578	11	(156)
Reform as process: the viceroyalties of Lord Leonard Grey and Sir Anthony St Leger, 1536--1547	13	(32)
Ireland and the mid-Tudor crisis, 1547--1556	45	(27)
Reform by programme: the viceroyalties of the earl of Sussex, 1556--1565	72	(41)
Reform on contract: the viceroyalties of Sir Henry Sidney, 1566--1578	113	(54)
Interlude: Government in Ireland, 1536--1579	159	(8)
Part 2 The impact of reform government, 1556--1583	167	(134)
Reform government and the feudal magnates	169	(40)
Reform government and the community of the Pale	209	(36)
Reform government and Gaelic Ireland	245	(56)
Epilogue: Reform in crisis: the viceroyalty of Sir John Perrot, 1584--1588	291	(10)
Bibliography	301	(16)
Index	317