History of Ireland (1536–1691)

The history of Ireland between 1536 and 1691 saw the conquest and colonisation of the island by the English state and the settlement of tens of thousands of Protestant settlers from England, Wales and Scotland. Ireland had been partially conquered by England in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, yet had never been fully brought under English rule. The Tudor conquest of the sixteenth century largely reduced the Gaelic lords of Leinster, Munster, Connacht and Ulster to English rule, while colonial projects like the Munster Plantation and Ulster Plantation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries transformed landholding in the country. In the process the Irish were subordinated to the rule of London-based governments and a British Protestant minority became the dominant political and economic class ruling over an Irish Roman Catholic majority. The period is bounded by the dates 1536, when King Henry VIII deposed the FitzGerald dynasty as Lords Deputies of Ireland (the new Kingdom of Ireland was declared by Henry VIII in 1542), and 1691, when the Catholic Jacobites surrendered at Limerick, thus confirming Protestant dominance in Ireland. This is sometimes called the early modern period.

The English Reformation, by which Henry VIII broke with Papal authority in 1536, was to change Ireland totally. While Henry VIII broke English Catholicism from Rome, his son Edward VI moved further, breaking with Papal doctrine completely. While the English, the Welsh and, later, the Scots accepted Protestantism, the Irish remained Catholic. Queen Mary I then reverted the state to Catholicism in 1553–58, and Queen Elizabeth I broke again with Rome in 1559. These confusing changes determined their relationship with the British state for the next four hundred years, as the Reformation coincided with a determined effort on behalf of the English state to re-conquer and colonise Ireland thereafter. The religious schism meant that the native Irish and the (Roman Catholic) Old English were to be excluded from power in the new settlement unless they converted to Protestantism.