This book offers a perspective on Irish History from the late sixteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. Many of the chapters address, from national, regional and individual perspectives, the key events, institutions and processes that transformed the history of early modern Ireland. Others probe the nature of Anglo-Irish relations, Ireland's ambiguous constitutional position during these years and the problems inherent in running a multiple monarchy. Where appropriate, the volume adopts a wider comparative approach and casts fresh light on a range of historiographical debates, including the 'New British Histories', the nature of the 'General Crisis' and the question of Irish exceptionalism. Collectively, these essays challenge and complicate traditional paradigms of conquest and colonization. By examining the inconclusive and contradictory manner in which English and Scottish colonists established themselves in the island, it casts further light on all of its inhabitants during the early modern period.

Thomas Hobbes is now regarded as one of England's greatest political philosophers. This book considers his reception in Ireland, where, it is suggested, the 'Leviathan' was released. In doing so, the book demonstrates the variety and sophistication of political thought in Ireland.

Crossing boundaries of political, intellectual and cultural history, this study highlights the complexity of political culture in Restoration Ireland. This book focuses on how historical memory and political discourse affected land settlement and political processes in early Restoration Ireland. The period 1660-1667 was one of insecurity for the Protestant plantation in Ireland, as Catholic spokesmen undermined the Protestant status quo. The Stuart Restoration and the English in Ireland draws out the dynamism of the rhetorical, moral and legal challenges that Catholics made to Protestant power inIreland and examines the Protestant responses and the rise of a Protestant identity inextricably linked with the possession of power. This identity was expressed as that of the 'English in Ireland', a belligerent self-denominationwhich did little to accommodate the king or the importance of monarchy to the Protestant position in the country. Crossing boundaries of political, intellectual and cultural history, the book highlights the complexity of political culture in Restoration Ireland, which was defined by the intersection of political language, ideas, historical understandings and economic imperatives. DANIELLE McCORMACK is Assistant Professor at the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland.

The study of Irish history, once riven and constricted, has recently enjoyed a resurgence, with new practitioners, new approaches, and new methods of investigation. The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History represents the diversity of this emerging talent and achievement by bringing together 36 leading scholars of modern Ireland and embracing 400 years of Irish history, uniting early and late modernists as well as contemporary historians. The Handbook offers a set of scholarly perspectives drawn from numerous disciplines, including history, political science, literature, geography, and the Irish language. It looks at the Irish at home as well as in their migrant and diasporic communities. The Handbook combines sets of wide thematic and interpretative essays, with more detailed investigations of particular periods. Each of the contributors offers a summation of the state of scholarship within their subject area, linking their own research insights with assessments of future directions within the discipline. In its breadth and depth and diversity, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History offers an authoritative and vibrant portrayal of the history of modern Ireland.

This Handbook brings together leading historians of the events surrounding the English revolution, exploring how the events of the revolution grew out of, and resonated, in the politics and interactions of the each of the Three Kingdoms--England, Scotland, and Ireland. It captures a shared British and Irish history, comparing the significance of events and outcomes across the Three Kingdoms. In doing so, the Handbook offers a broader context for the history of the Scottish Covenanters, the Irish Rising of 1641, and the government of Confederate Ireland, as well as the British and Irish perspective on the English civil wars, the English revolution, the Regicide, and Cromwellian period. The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution explores the significance of these events on a much broader front than conventional studies. The events are approached not simply as political, economic, and social crises, but as challenges to the predominant forms of religious and political thought, social relations, and standard forms of cultural expression. The contributors provide up-to-date analysis of the political happenings, considering the structures of social and political life that shaped and were re-shaped by the crisis. The Handbook goes on to explore the long-term legacies of the crisis in the Three Kingdoms and their impact in a wider European context.

A new investigation into the 1641 Irish rebellion, contrasting its myth with the reality.

Though known today largely for dating the creation of the world to 4004BC, James Ussher (1581-1656) was an important scholar and ecclesiastical leader in the seventeenth century. As Professor of Theology at Trinity College Dublin, and Archbishop of Armagh from 1625, he shaped the newly protestant Church of Ireland. Tracing its roots back to St Patrick, he gave it a sense of Irish identity and provided a theology which was strongly Calvinist and fiercely anti-Catholic. In exile in England in the 1640s he advised both king and parliament, trying to heal the ever-widening rift by devising a compromise over church government. Forced finally to choose sides by the outbreak of civil war in 1642, Ussher opted for the royalists, but found it difficult to combine his loyalty to Charles with his detestation of Catholicism. A meticulous scholar and an extensive researcher, Ussher had a breathtaking command of languages and disciplines - 'learned to a miracle' according to one of his friends. He worked on a series of problems: the early history of bishops, the origins of Christianity in Ireland and Britain, and the implications of double predestination, making advances which were to prove of lasting significance. Tracing the interconnections between this scholarship and his wider ecclesiastical and political interests, Alan Ford throws new light on the character and attitudes of a seminal figure in the history of Irish Protestantism.

Thomas Wentworth landed in Ireland in 1633 - almost 100 years after Henry VIII had begun his break with Rome. The majority of the people were still Catholic. William Laud had just been elevated to Canterbury. A Yorkshire cleric, John Bramhall, followed the new viceroy and became, in less than one year, Bishop of Derry. This 2007 study, which is centred on Bramhall, examines how these three men embarked on a policy for the established Church which represented not only a break with a century of reforming tradition but which also sought to make the tiny Irish Church a model for the other Stuart kingdoms. Dr McCafferty shows how accompanying canonical changes were explicitly implemented for notice and eventual adoption in England and Scotland. However within eight years the experiment was blown apart and reconstruction denounced as subversive. Wentworth, Laud and Bramhall faced consequent disgrace, trial, death or exile.

Demonstrates that there was ... a significant Welsh involvement in Ireland between 1558 and 1641. It explores how the Welsh established themselves as soldiers, government officials and planters in Ireland. It also discusses how the Welsh, although participating in the 'English' colonisation of Ireland, nevertheless remained a distinct community, settling together and maintaining strong kinship and social and economic networks to fellow countrymen, including in Wales.

"The first biography in sixty years of the most important non-dramatic poet of the English Renaissance"--From publisher description.