Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland: Clerical Resistance and Political Conflict in the Diocese of Dublin, 1534-1590

This book examines the efforts of the Tudor regime to implement the ‘English Reformation’ in Ireland during the sixteenth century. Centred on the diocese of Dublin, the book challenges the traditional assumption that the Reformation was ultimately defeated by Tridentine Catholicism and Counter-Reformation missionaries. Instead, it contends that the most significant opposition came from a survivalist clerical elite who rejected the ‘new religion’ on the grounds that its adoption would ruin the English cultural ethos of the Pale community, of which traditional medieval Catholicism was a fundamental part. Thus, as well as demonstrating that the task of enforcing the Reformation was more formidable than has been accepted, and its failure more complex that has been assumed, the book also questions some commonly held assumptions concerning the contribution of religion to the formation of national identity on these islands.