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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2016
One of the things which has united historians across the generations when writing about the Reformation in its Tudor Irish context is the conviction that the state was ultimately unsuccessful in securing the allegiance of the indigenous population to its religious dictates. Where this agreement has broken down, and continues to break down, is in the significance attached to the Tudor state’s failure, and in determining precisely when it became apparent.
Until the end of the 1960s most examinations of sixteenth-century Ireland identified the Tudor failure as being synonymous with the practical and absolute failure of the Protestant Reformation. These studies were generally characterised by a partipris approach and by their employment of an interlinked and deterministic vision to explain this failure. Echoing the observations of contemporaries like Archbishop Loftus of Dublin, who spoke of the Irish people’s ‘disposition to popery’, writers of all religious persuasions saw the Reformation’s failure as an inevitable consequence of the inherently conservative character of the island’s inhabitants.
1 Archbishop Loftus to Burghley, 22 Sept. 1590 (Cal. S.P. Ire., 1588–92, p. 365).
2 For the clerical hagiographers generally see Edwards, R. D. and O’Dowd, Mary, Sources for early modern Irish history, 1534-1641 (Cambridge, 1985), pp 171-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a particular example and an analysis of his work as a historian see Cunningham, Bernadette, ‘Seventeenth-century interpretations of the past: the case of Geoffrey Keating’ in I.H.S., xxv, no. 98 (Nov. 1986), pp 116-28.Google Scholar
3 For an example from the era of emancipation see Brennan, M. J., An ecclesiastical history of Ireland, from the introduction of Christianity … to the year MDCCCXXIX (2 vols, Dublin, 1840), ii, 86-163Google Scholar. For an overtly Catholic/nationalist view of the Reformation see the works of Ronan, M. V.: The Reformation in Dublin, 1536-1558 (London, 1926)Google Scholar; The Reformation in Ireland under Elizabeth, 1558–1580 (London, 1930); ‘The Reformation in Ireland’ in Eyre, Edward (ed.), European civilization: its origin and development (7 vols, Oxford, 1934-9), iv, 561-629.Google Scholar
4 Brennan, , Ecc. hist. Ire., ii, 91.Google Scholar
5 Leland, Thomas, The history of Ireland from the invasion of Henry II (3 vols, London, 1773), ii, 160.Google Scholar
6 For a characteristic view of the ‘papal tyranny’ see Mant, Richard’s ‘Summary view of the Church of Ireland, from the papal usurpation, in the twelfth century, to the beginning of the Reformation, in the sixteenth’ in his History of the Church of Ireland from the Reformation to the revolution (2 vols, London, 1840), i, 1-106.Google Scholar
7 This view is implicit, for example, in Harris, Walter’s edition of Ware’s De praesulibus Hiberniae: The whole works of Sir James Ware concerning Ireland, revised and improved, ed. Harris, Walter (3 vols in 2, Dublin, 1739, 1746), i Google Scholar. See also Shirley, E. P. (ed.), Original letters and papers in illustration of the Church of Ireland during the reigns of Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth (London, 1851), pp vii–viii.Google Scholar
8 Dublin, 1935.
9 Phillips, W. A. (ed.), History of the Church of Ireland from the earliest times to the present day (3 vols, Oxford, 1933-4), ii, 169-524.Google Scholar
10 Edwards, Church and state, p. 305. Edwards’s nationalism is evident in his implied criticism of the Palesmen for failing to support ‘the scheme of a Catholic and independent Ireland’ during the Nine Years’ War (ibid., pp 301-2).
11 Phillips, , Ch. of Ire., ii, 244-5.Google Scholar
12 Bradshaw, Brendan, ‘George Browne, first Reformation bishop of Dublin’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, University College, Dublin, 1966)Google Scholar, which spawned two articles: ‘The opposition to the ecclesiastical legislation in the Irish Reformation parliament’ in I.H.S., xvi, no. 63 (Mar. 1969), pp 285–303 (this first appeared as an appendix in the thesis); and ‘George Browne, first Reformation archbishop of Dublin’ in Jn. Ecc. Hist., xxi (1970), pp 301–26.
13 Cambridge, 1974.
14 Bradshaw, Brendan, ‘The beginnings of modern Ireland’ in Farrell, Brian (ed.), The Irish parliamentary tradition (Dublin, 1973), pp 68–87 Google Scholar; idem, ‘The Edwardian Reformation in Ireland, 1547–53’ in Archiv. Hib., xxxiv (1976–7), pp 83–99; idem, The Irish constitutional revolution of the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1979).
15 Bradshaw, Brendan, ‘Fr Wolfe’s Description of Limerick city, 1574’ in N. Munster Antiq. Jn., xvii (1975), pp 47–53 Google Scholar; see also idem, ‘The Reformation in the cities: Cork, Limerick and Galway, 1534–1603’ in John Bradley (ed.), Settlement and society in medieval Ireland (Kilkenny, 1988), pp 445-76.
16 Bradshaw, Brendan, ‘Sword, word and strategy in the Reformation in Ireland’ in Hist. Jn., xxi (1978), pp 475–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 In Jn. Ecc. Hist., xxx (1979), pp 423–50.
18 Ibid., pp 429–32, 435–6.
19 Ibid., pp 432–5.
20 Bottingheimer, Karl, ‘The failure of the Reformation in Ireland: une question bien posée’ in Jn. Ecc. Hist., xxxvi (1985), pp 196–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21 See below, pp 350-52.
22 See especially Walshe, Helen Coburn, ‘Enforcing the Elizabethan settlement: the vicissitudes of Hugh Brady, bishop of Meath, 1563-84’ in I.H.S., xxvi, no. 104 (Nov. 1989), pp 352-76Google Scholar; Clarke, Aidan, ‘Varieties of uniformity: the first century of the Church of Ireland’ in Sheils, W. J. and Wood, Diana (eds), The churches, Ireland and the Irish, Studies in Church History xxv (Oxford, 1989), pp 105-22Google Scholar; Ellis, S. G., ‘Economic problems of the church: why the Reformation failed in Ireland’ in Jn. Ecc. Hist., xli (1990), pp 239-65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23 For an example of this approach and a warning against the use of over-simplified generalisations about the subject see Murray, James, ‘The sources of clerical income in the Tudor diocese of Dublin’ in Archiv. Hib., xlvi (1991-2), pp 139-60.Google Scholar
24 Helga Robinson-Hammerstein, ‘Erzbischof Adam Loftus und die elisabethanische Reformationspolitik in Irland’ (unpublished DrPhil. thesis, University of Marburg, 1976), pp 93–148.Google Scholar
25 Bradshaw, ‘Sword, word & strategy’, pp 480-81.
26 In Helmholz, R. H. (ed.), Canon law in Protestant lands (Berlin, 1992), pp 223-52.Google Scholar
27 E.g. White, N. B. (ed.), Registrum diocesis Dublinensis (Dublin, 1959)Google Scholar, and Bullingbroke, Edward, Ecclesiastical law … of the Church of Ireland (2 vols, Dublin, 1770).Google Scholar
28 For Brady’s views on Tudor government see his ‘Conservative subversives: the community of the Pale and the Dublin administration, 1556–86’ in Varieties of uniformity: the first century of the Church of Ireland Corish, P. J. (ed.), Radicals, rebels and establishments: Historical Studies XV (Belfast, 1985), pp 11–32 Google Scholar; idem, ‘Court, castle and community, the framework of government in Tudor Ireland’ in Brady, Ciaran and Gillespie, Raymond (eds), Natives and newcomers: essays on the making of Irish colonial society, 1534-1641 (Dublin, 1986), pp 22–49.Google Scholar
29 Lennon, Colm, ‘Recusancy and the Dublin Stanihursts’ in Archiv. Hib., xxxiii (1975), pp 101-10Google Scholar; idem, Richard Stanihurst the Dubliner, 1547-1618 (Dublin, 1981); idem, The lords of Dublin in the age of the Reformation (Dublin, 1989); idem, ‘The chantries in the Irish Reformation: the case of St Anne’s Guild, Dublin, 1550-1630’ in Comerford, R. V. et al. (eds), Religion, conflict and coexistence in Ireland (Dublin, 1990), pp 8–25.Google Scholar
30 For a convenient summary of this process see Lennon, Colm, ‘The rise of recusancy among the Dublin patricians, 1580-1613’ in Sheils, & Wood, (eds), The churches, Ireland & the Irish, pp 123-32.Google Scholar