David Heffernan 
Debating Tudor policy in sixteenth-century Ireland 
’Reform’ treatises and political discourse

Ireland was conquered and gradually colonized by the Tudors during the sixteenth century. This much is clear but whether or not this was the actual goal of English policy in Ireland at that time has long been debated by historians. Debating Tudor policy in sixteenth-century Ireland examines a set of sources which provide a unique insight into English rule in Tudor Ireland. These are policy papers or treatises written at the time on how to ‘reform’ Ireland and bring it under greater crown control. The study constitutes the first systematic study of the approximately six-hundred such treatises to have survived. In doing so it sheds light on how the Tudors arrived at the policies they decided to implement in Ireland and examines how English officials and other parties within Ireland viewed the Irish and the country at that time.

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David Edwards is Senior Lecturer in History at University College Cork