Irish History Timeline

The Normans In Ireland

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1156	Rory O’Connor, son of Turlough O'Connor, succeeded to high king of Ireland.
1161	King Dermot’s brother-in-law, Lawrence O'Tool or Lorcán Ó Tuathail, was appointed archbishop. The Dubliners themselves had killed Dermot’s father and preferred O’Connor to MacMurrough. O’Connor joined forces with Tiernan O’Rourke and MacMurrough was dethroned.
	The English had occasionally considered invading Ireland. Canterbury may have raised the subject after losing metropolitan rights over the see of Dublin in 1152. The pope invested Henry II with the right to rule Ireland, but Henry’s grip on England was still insecure.
1166	Rory O’Connor had himself inaugurated king at Dublin. However, Dublin was suited to act as capital to Leinster, ruled by Dermot MacMurrough. MacMurrough approached Henry for help. Henry authorised his subjects to aid him. MacMurrough promised his Cambro-Norman supporters land and his daughter in marriage.
1169 – 71	The Cambro-Normans re-conquered all Leinster. Henry II withdrew consent when he saw how successful his invasion was, but Strongbow (earl of Pembroke) made himself lord of Leinster.
1170	(May 1st) A small party of Normans, Strongbow's soldiers, landed at Baginbun at the invitation of Dermot MacMurrough. They built a vast rampart that survives today. At the time the Irish fought with slings and stones, while the Normans had knights, archers and other technology.
	Strongbow captured Dublin, married Macmurrough’s daughter and ultimately became king of Leinster. Henry II then arrived to subdue Strongbow, which soon meant conquering the Irish as well.
	The Norman adventurers who followed Strongbow into Ireland formed alliances with some chieftains in order to attack others, building great castles. They spread all over Ireland apart from western and central Ulster. Their allegiance to Henry was only nominal and they eventually intermarried with the Irish, adopting their ways, laws and language. They English kings tried to stop this assimilation.
1171	(17^th Oct). Henry II went over to stifle this new Norman kingdom. Strongbow submitted and was allowed to keep Leinster as a fief. Henry reserved Dublin for himself and received submission from various Irish kings. Becket had just been murdered, so Henry couldn’t press his papal grant at once.
1171/2	A great national synod of Irish church was convened, intended to bring Irish church into step with the English. After Henry was reconciled with the new pope, the Irish prelates inundated the pope with letters commending Henry. The Irish kings and bishops hoped for Henry’s protection against Strongbow; they saw it as exchanging the rule of O’Connor for a more prestigious king.
1175	By now Strongbow and Hugh de Lacy – a follower of Henry’s – had subdued their vast territories. The Treaty of Windsor was signed between Rory O’Connor and Henry II. Rory was recognised as high-king of Ireland outside Leinster, Meath and Waterford, but these kings had to pay tribute to Henry, and he had to force Irishmen fleeing the conquered areas to return.
1176	Rebellions took place against both O’Connor and the English.
	Strongbow died, transferring Leinster to Henry. By then he had a greater financial stake in the conquest.
1177	John de Courcy exceeded instructions by conquering Ulaid (Ulster).
	Henry gave his rights as Lord of Ireland to his son John. Cork and Limerick were granted away, although Limerick’s new owners failed to west any land from O’Brien.
1183	O’Connor retired to an abbey; Henry petitioned the pope to crown John king of Ireland. However, the Irish were growing disenchanted with Plantagenet lordship. Even Gerald of Wales though the English were breaking their original agreement.
1185	Prince John mocked Irish chieftains who greeted him in Waterford, and after that there were no more submissions.
	The Prince was suspicious of men like De Lacy. He handed out smaller grants to a greater number of tenants-in-chief, resulting in important Anglo-Irish dynasties being founded. Some English lords expanded their territory by marrying Irish aristocrats. They also fought amongst themselves.
1186	De Lacy was assassinated, and Meath passed to administrators. The English strategy was gradually changing to colonisation. A European population explosion had begun, meaning land in Ireland was tempting. Many private individuals were involved in colonisation. Fortified castles and mottes were built. New towns were founded and tenants imported. These Anglo-Norman towns were laid out in a grid pattern.
1200	By now, new citizens were immigrating from England, Wales, France and Flanders. All incomers were regarded as free, but the native Irish tenantry, ‘betaghs’, were serfs. Only one Irish family was assimilated into the colony’s feudal aristocracy; the rest were confined to uncolonised districts.
	The English language began to take root, while Norman French became the upper class literary language. Architecture changed with churches built in Early English Gothic style, using English stone. The east changed from a subsistence to a market economy.
1200s	Irish bardic poets viewed themselves as part of the European cultural community, but the French and English didn’t see them as such. Gerald of Wales argued that the marcher lords of Ireland were part of this culture, but the native Irish were not.
	In the eleventh century most clergy still supported marriage, concubinage, hereditary office-holding etc. This lent credibility to colonial legislation against Irish clergy. Franciscan and Dominican friars were responsible for more preaching and pastoral work.
	Popular opinion was more strongly against the invasion than that of the chieftains, and prophecies circulated against the Normans.
	Bands of mercenaries fought for both the Irish kings and English barons, swapping sides for money. Scottish warriors (gallowglass) began to come over. Within the Gaelic territories, power began to centre on every minor chief who could command a war-band. Elsewhere in Europe, there was a trend towards mercenary armies. In Ireland, they were allowed to take their own wages from husbandsmen, dissipating the agricultural surplus.
1210	King John intervened to take back lands from his nobles, and twenty Irish kings did homage to him. He expanded his King’s Council in Ireland, which evolved into parliamentary sessions.
1216	King John was succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry III.
1217	First Treasurer of Ireland promoted. The government in England issued an order that no Irishman should be promoted to high ecclesiastical office. Henry de Londres, Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Justice of Ireland, convened a synod at which canonical singing was discussed.
1226	Until the mid thirteenth century, the provincial Irish kings co-operated with the English and so retained their lands. However, these were not given security of succession; Connacht was declared forfeit in this year, resulting in a nine year war.
1248	King’s Bench in Dublin instituted (today contained within the Four Courts).
	The liberties were gradually phased out and an elaborate system of government came in. Administrators from the English church were brought in. There was a campaign to ensure that all dioceses under royal control had Anglo-Norman bishops.
1254	Edward I was granted lordship of Ireland. He used the country to provision his campaigns in Scotland, France and Wales. Edward II was to continue this policy. Local rule by Irish chieftains was cheaper.
1260	Brian O'Neill, who declared himself king of Ireland, was killed in battle by colonists. There was a series of revolts which has been seen as the beginning of a Gaelic recovery, but the colony was still expanding. Soon Irish kings had to co-operate with the barons themselves.
1277	First salaried barons of the exchequer. A separate royal seal for Ireland was made under Henry III. King John also instituted sheriffs, shires, county courts and itinerant justices.
Late 13^th C	Those settlers in the east expanded into the west. English peasantry were not introduced to the west; the tenants were almost all Irish, governed by native rulers who answered to the English.

8000 BC	Around this time the first men arrived in Scotland. Ireland was not originally Celtic but Neolithic. The Celts were to arrive during the of the millennium BC, and absorbed much of Neolithic culture. Estimates as to when the Gaels arrived range from 4000 BC to the first few centuries BC.
3000 BC	Tombs from this period have been found in passage-graves in the Boyne valley. At this time, Ireland was a simple agricultural society. Irish art had begun to develop. The people had come as invaders, and more invaders followed from Britain, France and Spain. Ornaments, coins and weaponry from the Bronze and Iron Age have been uncovered by archaeologists. The Romans never set foot in Ireland although they considered an invasion. Ireland was a society of independent tribal kingdoms who lived by agriculture, raiding and fighting with continuous shifts in alliances. The early pagan Gaels’ High Kings have left behind raths (ring forts) on the Hill of Tara. They claimed to be rulers of all Ireland but weren’t so in a modern way. Rather, they spend time defending their symbolic title against other king s. Despite tribal groupings, the people shared the Brehon Law, a common history, oral poetry, music and language. They referred to themselves as ‘men of Ireland’ and shared a cultural identity which could be thought of as a form of nationhood. Celtic culture involved druids, bardic praise-poetry and clientship. The Irish language was heavily influenced by pre-Celtic tongues. Cults and occupations were carried over from Neolithic times. Some tribes such as the Brigante s lived in both Britain and Ireland. Britain and Ireland shared languages, dominant aristocracies and populations (like the Cruithin/Picti).
4th Century	Rome influenced Ireland more in the fourth century and after. As the Romans lost their grip on Britain, the Irish and Picts began to invade.
367 AD	The Irish, Picts and Saxons launched a concerted raid on Britain.

Late 4th / Early 5th C	Christian missionaries arrived, probably from Gaul. Irish settlements began in the west of Britain. North and south-west Wales, Cornwell and Devon were colonised. The most successful colony was the Dál-Riata in Scotland. Colonisation and raids on Britain influenced Irish culture. Romanisation began in the fifth century, derived from the Romano-British culture of western Britain. The Ogham alphabet clearly came from Latin.
431 AD	Palladius went as bishop to ‘the Irish who believe in Christ’. This was to oppose the Pelagian heresy.
432 AD	St Patrick arrived to convert the kings. Conversion was slow, although St Patrick was not the only missionary. A Gaelic-Christian golden age was to follow. St Patrick was a Romano-Briton who had been enslaved by Irish raiders, before escaping and turning to religion. He drove out traditional pagan rites, leading to a fusion of Gaelic culture with Christianity. Irish Christianity ‘shone like a beacon in Europe’ after the fall of Rome. The seventh and eighth centuries saw a Gaelic golden age when Irish history was documented and great works of art were fashioned.
500s	Christianity matured slowly in a stable society. The king of Tara in the middle of the sixth century was still pagan. Monasticism made strides during this century, influenced by the British church. Monasteries were originally strict retreats from the world, but became wealthy and influential, bearing a rich literary and artistic culture. As time passed the monasteries grew into little cities with a variety of inhabitants. Provincial kings lived in some of them. Several monasteries owned huge tracts of land and were ruled by worldly and wealthy abbots. Irish schools in the late sixth and seventh centuries achieved great scholarship, and many poets and lawyers were also clerics. Laws were created for church and secular society. The problem of inherited non-Christian customs, ‘fenechas’, was resolved by regarding it as the Old Testament of their race, cleansed by St Patrick. New laws were influenced by the Biblical Old Testament.
600s	During this time, the cult of St Patrick spread. A prehistory of the Irish race was written to unite all the people of Ireland. All people were supposed to be descended from the same ancestors, and Irish was constructed from the best elements of the Tower of Babel.The concept of a kingship of Ireland first appeared and the Uí Neíll claimed kingship over all Ireland, over all provincial kings, although they never achieved their goal. Numerous shifts in power and boundary changes occurred. Another powerful tribe to fight against the Uí Neíll were the Eóganacht.
600s – 800s	The arts (metal-work, illumination, calligraphy) flowered in the monasteries. Iona and Armagh were the greatest ecclesiastical power-centres. Iona was founded by Columba and Armagh by Patrick. The church’s power structure was complex, with individual churches being highly independent. Some were free while others were owned by aristocrats or monasteries. Churches could be tiny or vast monasteries. Bishops were appointed to oversee the clergy. The relationship between church and people was a contract with mutual obligations. The church supplied religious services while the people paid dues. Three social classes existed during this age – kings, lords and commoners. Lords were wealthy and had clients (bondsmen). Commoners were freemen with full legal rights and their own land. Some were well off (the bóaire). There were also landless men and hereditary serfs. Status was important in the legal system – rights and legal compensations depended on it. Under clientship, lords granted the client a fief (goods) and protection; the client made payments to the lord. There was free and base clientship – free clients were often nobles, and took a share in their lord’s plunder. Base clientship was like a loan, from which the lord came out best. Slavery was extensive. The family, not the individual, was the legal unit – extended family, not conjugal family, which meant the male-line descendants of a great-grandfather. Divorce and polygamy were common, going back to the pre-Augustinian attitudes to marriage. Polygamy remained until the end of the Middle Ages. With nobles having many children, these slipped socially downwards and displaced the commoners. The population was between half and one million. Much of the land was wilderness and uninhabited. The more powerful – any farmers with land – owned ringforts to protect their farms. Land was farmed in strips; milk and dairy was important. The upper classes ate a lot of meat, which formed a normal part of clients’ payments. Grain was also vital – oat for porridge, barley for ale and bread. Vegetables were grown on a small scale and wild fruit and nuts were important in people’s diet. Famine was common, coupled with disease, social disorder and internal migration. Epidemics occurred repeatedly. Kings played a key role. In their sagas, they are semi-sacred. There were three grades of king. The lowest grade were on their way out in the 700s. The church backed the kings of provinces in their dynastic struggles, and the kings defended the church. The churchmen developed the idea of the ordained and consecrated king; they wrote that the king should be obeyed and respected, but should not tax too much.

793	Lindisfarne attacked by Vikings.
795	The first Vikings arrived in Ireland, pirates led by aristocrats. Their first targets included Rathlin and Iona. They harassed Irish homesteads and monasteries for more than a century, meeting no organised national resistance.
798	St Patrick’s Island monastery was smashed.
800s	By the middle of this century, the Dál Riata had control of all Pictland, uniting Scotland under Kenneth mac Alpine. Viking traders brought slaves into Ireland from now until the 1000s.
802	Burning of Iona.
806	Another massacre at Iona, in which 68 monks died. More attacks followed. The Irish had some successes in striking back.
830s	Viking raids became more intense.
836	The first known inland raid took place.
840	Vikings began setting up defended bases and their attacks became so intense that it seemed the country was about to be conquered. The Irish kings and abbots counter-attacked with growing success.
842	First Viking-Irish alliance. These alliances became common.
Mid 9th C	Dublin became the most important Viking city.
860s	The Vikings turned to England.
914 – 930s	Second Viking period. After beating the Uí Neílls, the Dublin Vikings were powerful for a while. No powerful monasteries were ever destroyed, even in Dublin. The Vikings didn’t cause the passing of the ‘old order’ and weren’t actually responsible for the abuses of the church they have been blamed for, such as married clergy. The monasteries, through their associations with aristocratic families, were often involved in battle already. Churches were also attacked for their supplies during famines.
928	Viking massacre at Dunmore Cave, Kilkenny.
940s – 960s	Dublin boomed as a great European trading city. While in Scotland the incomers were farmers and fishermen, in Ireland they were merchants and seamen. The Uí Neíll clan was locked in an internal power struggle during this time.
956 - 980	Domnall ua Néill was King of Tara, High King of Ireland.
976	Brian Boru became king of the Dal Cais, becoming a serious rival to the Uí Neílls. Supported by the Ostmen, he conquered Dublin and Leinster, and then the whole country.
1002	Boru demanded that Mael Sechnaill recognise him as King of Ireland.
1005	Brian Boru was declared Emperor of the Irish at Armagh.
1014	Brian Boru defeated the Vikings at Clontarf. The army he fought contained both Norsemen from Dublin and Leinster Irishmen. Boru was not supported by the other great kings, and he himself was killed by a Danish king named Brodar.
	Gradually the Norsemen became part of Ireland. They build the first Irish towns such as Arklow and Wexford, intermarried with Gaelic Irish and settled into a Gaelic pattern of warring kings.
11^th/12^th C	The Irish church was beginning to look old-fashioned. The abbots, usually laymen, were too powerful. The laity attitude to marriage was also criticised. A general reorganisation took place, giving the church its current diocesan organisation. A national church under Armagh was created. Foreign orders, especially the Cistercians, took over the monasteries. Irish literature, culture and learning suffered. The church scholars moved out and clerical lawyers became secularised.
1014 – 1022	Mael Sechnaill II acted as ‘high king’ of Ireland. Provincial kings were growing more powerful; warfare increased. More administrators were needed to mind kingdoms in the king’s absence. Kings were granting away large territories and carving them up between their supporters. They also made laws and imposed taxes. They granted land in return for homage and military service.
1086 – 1114	Ireland's most powerful king was Muirchertach O’Brien.
(Late 11^th C)	Trade began to focus on Anglo-Norman Britain and on France. Chester and Bristol traded with Dublin. The rest of Ireland followed, and the resultant economic dependence meant that the Irish kings showed devotion to Henry I. Dublin was also a recruiting ground for Norse warriors who would help any side in the competition for supreme power.
1140	Turlough O’Connor (Toirdelbach Ua Conchobair), king of Connacht, was the greatest Irish warrior king of this century. From 1140 he devoted his energies to becoming supreme king.
1152	Dublin became a metropolitan archbishopric. Previously it had been a diocese subject to Canterbury while the rest of the church was dominated by hereditary lay abbots.

14th Century	By the beginning of this century, all native rulers were legally subject to some Anglo-Norman baron or earl, or the English king. The expansion of the colonisers continued. The Anglo-Norman magnates often fought one another.
1303	The Armagh succession passed to a series of Anglo-Irish prelates.
1315 – 18	Edward and Robert Bruce attempted to gain Irish support for the Scottish war, but alienated the colonists. Their three year campaign devastated much land, while the population were also affected by the famine sweeping Europe. There were rebellions. Edward was killed in 1318.
1327	The agricultural boom in Europe was levelling off and the barons had become more interested in their more profitable English holdings. By this year, almost half of colonised land belonged to absentees. The resident Anglo-Irish nobility accused them of endangering the colonies through neglect.
1348/49	The Black Death struck during this time. This and bad harvests were leading to the migration of colonists of all classes back to England.
1366	Statutes of Kilkenny, aimed at preventing settlers becoming too Irish. The ‘English born in Ireland’ were forbidden to adopt Irish clothing and customs. The Statutes also forbade intermarriage and the use of March/Brehon law. They proved ineffective, leading to the Anglo-Irish becoming known as the ‘degenerate English’. Even the Norman-Irish barons acting as deputies for the English king became independent. Royal government grew feeble and beleaguered.
	Edward III and then Richard II attempted to restore the colony’s prosperity. Initially Edward announced that the Irish administrators would be replaced by Englishmen, but this caused such outrage that he decided to reinforce royal control and invest men and money. The colonists were genuinely fearful for their survival. They feared a reoccupation by the Irish, and there was a perception that uncolonised areas were in the hands of the ‘wild Irish’. Native rulers were gradually gaining liberty from the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. There was fighting between Irish chieftains because the magnates had previously followed a policy of ‘divide and rule’. Meanwhile, a cultural revival was taking place. Bardic verse was intended to increase the prestige of patrons, and it came back into fashion despite Irish minstrels being banned in 1366 until the seventeenth century. The scribes and traditional historians also enjoyed enthusiastic patronage, and great manuscripts were written which recalled pre-Norman lineages, borders and culture.
	The colonists were unwilling to make large contributions towards reconquest, and absentee landlords preferred to sell their estates to residents of Ireland rather than return. The Irish meanwhile hoped to accumulate sufficient power to challenge the earls by recreating provincial kingships. Various chiefs were styling themselves as the kings of provinces. The Great O’Neill father and son declared themselves Prince and Governor of Ulster despite the earl of Ulster Roger Mortimer. Richard II offered to arbitrate, but made Mortimer governor of Ireland, and war followed.
1394/5	Richard came over to resolve the newly recognised ‘Irish problem’. This meant that government in Ireland was once again centralised, but England’s attention was caught by the Hundred Year’s War. Ireland had become a financial drain.
1399	Second visit by Richard. War broke out as soon as he departed, and his viceroy was murdered.
15^th C	The Anglo-Irish magnates were more successful during this period than the Irish or the Crown, whose control shrank to four counties including Dublin. This was enclosed by an earthen rampart known as the Pale.
	The Irish, particularly those of Ulster, began to unite and attack the colonists, and some of the colonists began paying black-rent or protection money to the Irish chieftains. However, the Anglo-Irish lords held sway over the more profitable and populous areas. These lords tried to gain control of royal lands for themselves. After Edward IV made an ill-judged attempt to recover control, the earls of Kildare were left the only surviving Anglo-Irish magnates still eligible for high office; and Kildare imposed its will on the Pale. A period of relative stability and economic growth followed. Many new religious houses went up, almost all founded by Gaelic patrons. Monastic houses in the Pale were decaying while Gaelic Ireland was influenced by a more dynamic European spirituality.
	A growing similarity developed between the Irish chieftains and the Anglo-Irish lords. The lords employed Irish historians to justify their status, based on the idea that they were the last in a long line of invaders, and that they had some Irish blood through intermarriage.

1459	Richard, Duke of York, was convicted of treason against King Henry VI and lost his title of Lieutenant of Ireland. Even so, the Anglo-Irish parliament confirmed him as leader and declared Ireland independent of English law. There had long been tension between the English of Ireland and of England. It was more the magnates than the commons who were interested in autonomy.
1494	The Tudors reinstated English royal dominance. An attempt was made to dismiss the Great Earl of Kildare from his title of Lord Deputy, but he was reinstated after raids by his Irish allies.
1496	By this time the line of ‘the Pale’ was at Clongowes. The boundary was continuing to shrink.
1500	The Dublin government was feeble by this time, but 200 years later it would be all-embracing. Its landowners were descendants of the Anglo-Normans, the ‘Old English’. They were firmly attached to English law and its Crown. There was always still a threat of Gaelic assault. The chieftains continued to attack the settlers, convincing the Old English that they were defending civil standards against barbarism. Fear of attack caused the Old English community to militarise, and their primary allegiance was to their lords rather than the king; some lords maintained castles and armies. The two great families were the Fitzgeralds and Butlers, who became rivals; the English kings made the Fitzgeralds their representatives. They were not interested in Ireland.
	By this time most of Ireland was ruled by Gaelic or Gaelicised lords, who rejected the English Crown. The church in these areas was very different to the English one.
1515	Sixty counties were ‘inhabited by the King’s Irish enemies’. There were 60 Irish chieftains who gave themselves various titles and 30 English doing the same, all warring against one another without input from the King.
	There was criticism that the aristocracy were becoming Gaelic and 'degenerating from English civility'. Irish society was fragmenting into lordships, some lords being Anglo-Norman and others Gaelic. They sought to monopolise their power. The grip of the Crown grew weaker.
	Through this century, the hiring of soldiers and manufacture of weapons became more costly. The farming population bore the cost. Pastoral (rather than arable) farming dominated. Agricultural practice was more advanced where the Old English population was predominant. Meanwhile, political disruption kept the population down while the number of people in the rest of Europe doubled throughout the century.
	Minor overseas trade was conducted by the Old English, but merchants found themselves being forestalled in Old English lords’ territories.
	Priesthood had become hereditary in the Gaelic lordships, and priests were clients of the local lord, with bishops often being part of the ruling family. The same trend (appointing aristocrats to important church positions) was followed in anglicised areas.
1534	Kildare rebellion took place against Henry VIII. The earls of Kildare, the House of Fitzgerald, who were meant to represent royal authority, rebelled against the Crown. Thomas, Lord Offaly, son of the ninth earl of Kildare, led a symbolic revolt to show that the power of the Kildares must remain. Henry VIII sent an army of 2300 and had all male members of the FitzGerald family executed. This harshness may have been because FitzGerald backed the pope, and because Henry needed to draw up an Irish parliament to confirm him head of the church. Henry ordered that all Irish lands were to be surrendered to the Crown and then regranted. To the Old English this was a reinforcement of their relationship to the King, but for the Gaelic chieftains the change was huge. They once held their land according to Gaelic law and tradition; now it was according to the King’s goodwill. This was the end of Gaelic Ireland.
	The submitted lords were expected to exact revenues, assist the extension of English legal administration and have their heirs raised in English households. In enforcing this, the cost of governing Ireland shot up, but the profits from rent and confiscated lands were being filched by the Pale.
1536/7	After the parliament of these years, monastic property was declared forfeit to the Crown and some of it given to the secular landowners in anglicised Ireland. However, there was no major drive to convert the population of anglicised Ireland because the English governors, officials and clergy were distracted by political crises. With the FitzGeralds gone, the Gaelic lords under their control began to attack the Pale, forcing the government to send in military expeditions. As this was expensive, the surviving FitzGerald heir was reinstated and the discontented Gaelic lords dispossessed until they submitted.
1541	English monarchs were styled kings of Ireland.
	English intervention in Ireland was reluctant, deriving from a concern to honour their obligation to defend their inheritance and to prevent foreign intruders invading Ireland. The English also took counsel from both Irish and Old English noblemen who gave conflicting advice, leaving the English paralysed. This lack of intervention meant that the Catholic reformers were able to mould Irish society. The first reformers were the Observant friars. These became opponents of the Crown after the English Reformation began. When the FitzGeralds of Kildare revolted against the Crown, it was depicted as a religious crusade and received extensive support from the Gaelic lords. Meanwhile, many Old English officials and lawyers took their sons out of English universities to stop them being corrupted by Protestantism, sending them to European universities where they learnt Counter-Reformation Catholicism.
1556-1579	Opposing aristocrats, Sussex and Sir Henry Sidney, competed for the position of governor of Ireland. Both devised schemes for Irish government, but their experience was so bad that senior politicians were subsequently reluctant to accept service in Ireland. Sussex supported military settlement in the Gaelic midland area, and continuing with the surrender and regrant policy. Councils would be set up in Anglo-Norman lordships that had 'lapsed' from English civility. He was however side-tracked by the lord of Tyrone, Shane O’Neill, who ignored the surrender and regrant arrangement. Sussex decided to oust him and raised money from the Pale, but the campaign dragged for four years without result until the Palesmen complained to Elizabeth and Sussex was withdrawn.
1562+	Elizabethan wars took place in Ireland. The English believed that the Irish were barbarians. There was a sense of missionary licence to civilise. It was believed that the Irish could only be civilised by force; Elizabeth I sanctioned shedding blood as a last resort. Her deputies were Englishmen and the Crown’s army was composed of English soldiers. Force was used against both the Old English and Gaelic Irish. The Old English themselves rebelled six times against the new order. Gaelic chieftains fought on either side. The ordinary Gaelic Irish population suffered. One deputy, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, displayed the heads of his victims at his camp. Some of Elizabeth’s officials condemned his cruelty and the murder of civilians. However most, including Leicester, believed it the only way to deal with savages. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, Ireland was for the first time under effective English control; but the foundations of Irish hatred for governing Englishmen had been laid. Meanwhile the Old English and Gaelic Irish moved closer together.
	The Reformation of the Church in England failed to take effect in Ireland. This was mainly because communication was extremely difficult in Ireland; it had a scattered population of a million and almost no roads. The Irish Church, meanwhile, used the Irish language and was uninterested in Lutheran ideas. The only place where Protestantism was found was Dublin. Elizabeth was afraid that Irish Catholics might make a religious appeal to Catholic powers like Spain.
	Once the Reformation was established in Ireland, all churches were given to the Protestants.
1565	Sidney became governor. His policy was to dispossess those who attacked the Crown or occupied its land. English settlers would be brought in to live on these dispossessed areas, introducing English law and civility. Ancient titles were revived and bestowed on English adventurers.
1569	James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald launched a