August 26 The Irish Laboratory

Introduction

Walter Ralegh

geography

varieties of Irishness

Gaelic (Celtic) Irish

Anglo-Normans > Old English [map]

I. The Tudor conquest

A. early Tudors

War of the Roses (1455-1485)

Kildare Rebellion (1534-35)

surrender and regrant

Act of 1537: "a conformitie, concordance, and familiarity in language,
tongue, in manners, order and apparel" = anglicization

Church of Ireland (1537) = Anglican

Kingdom of Ireland (1541)

New English

Henry VIII

 

B. shift to colonization

plantation [map]

tools of empire

Humphrey Gilbert

Munster rebellions (1570s-1583)

Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Desmond

Walter Ralegh (1552-1618)

22,000 settlers by 1641

O'Neill Rebellion (1595-1603)

Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone

Flight of the Earls (1607)

Ulster Plantation [map]

Ulster Scots

II. The Irish laboratory

personnel

methods of colonization

attitudes

Fynes Moryson: "more barbarous and more brutish in the costomes and demeanures then in any other parte of the world that is knowne"

Sir John Davies, A Discovery of the True Causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued (1612): behaved "little better than Canniballes, who doe hunt one another, and hee that hath most strength and swiftness doth eate and deovoures all his fellowes"

Smith to Fitzwilliam, 8 Nov 1572:  “This I write unto you as I do understand by histories of things by past, how this contrey of England, ones as uncivill as Ireland now is, was by colonies of the Romaynes brought to understand the lawes and orders of thanncient orders whereof there hath no nacon more straightly and truly kept the mouldes even to this day than we, yea more than thitalians and Romaynes themselves”