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The Failure of the Reformation in Ireland: Une Question Bien Posée

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

K. Bottigheimer
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Extract

In an important article published in this Journal in 1979, Professor Nicholas Canny attacked the notion that the Protestant Reformation had failed in Ireland by 1558 and argued that the entire question was misformulated, in part because no such decisive event occurred until the nineteenth century. It is the argument of the present article that Professor Canny did not disprove the relevance or usefulness of the question, and that ‘why the Reformation failed in Ireland’ remains a central problem of early modern Irish history.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , April 1985 , pp. 196 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

An earlier version of this article was read at University College Galway in April 1983. I wish to thank my hosts on that occasion, particularly Nicholas Canny and Steven Ellis, for their numerous forms of help and hospitality, and for many suggestions and criticisms. I should also like to thank Aidan Clarke and Brendan Bradshaw for help on various points. The paper’s remaining defects are those of the author alone.

1 ‘Why the Reformation failed in Ireland: Une question mal posée’, this Journal, xxx (1979) 423–50Google Scholar.

2 Ibid. 450.

3 Ibid.

4 Connolly, S. J., ‘Religion and history’, Irish Economic and Social History, x (1983), 79Google Scholar.

5 See especially Desmond Bowen, The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800–70, Dublin 1978.

6 See Johnston, E. M., ‘Problems common to both Protestant and Catholic Churches in eighteenth century Ireland’, in MacDonagh, Oliver, Mandle, W. T. and Travers, Pauric (eds.), Irish Culture and Nationalism, 1750–1950, New York 1983Google Scholar.

7 Corish, Patrick J., The Catholic Community in the 17th and 18th Centuries, Dublin 1981, 20Google Scholar.

8 Op. cit., 18–42.

9 Op. cit., 26.

10 Parr, Richard, Life of James Ussher, London 1686, 83Google Scholar (Ussher to Lord Grandison, 16 October 1622).

11 Ibid.

12 Corish, The Catholic Community, 29.

13 Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS 843.

14 Falkiner, C. Litton, Illustrations of Irish History and Topography, London 1904, 382Google Scholar.

15 Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1647–60 and Addenda, 1625–60 (hereafter cited as C.S.P.I.), 199.

16 Archivium Hibemicum, v (1916), 1.

17 So did the Roman bishop of Kilmore, Eugene Sweeney! Tanner MSS, ccxc, 6 Oct. 1629, in William Bedell [the younger], Life of Bedell, ed. T. Wharton Jones (Camden Society, N.S. 4, 1872), 149.

18 The Tanner Letters, ed. Charles McNeill (Irish Manuscripts Commission 1943), 104, Bedell to Ward, 2 Feb. 1633–4.

19 Parr, Ussher, 453, Bedell to Ussher, 18 Sept. 1630.

20 Cited by Jourdan, G. V. in Philipps, W. A. (ed.), History of the Church of Ireland, London 1933–1994. iii. 18Google Scholar.

21 A derisive comparison with the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was clearly intended, C.S.P.I., 1633–47, 17. 10 Aug. 1633.

22 C.S.P.I., 1633–47, 31.

23 Bedell to Laud, 1 April 1630, Burnet, Gilbert, Life of Bedell, London 1685, 46–7Google Scholar.

24 Two Biographies of William Bedell, Cambridge 1902, xviii.

25 Ibid.

26 I am indebted to Barbara Taft of Washington, D.C. for calling to my attention some of the Irish utterances of the English Republicans. See Williams, C. M. essay on Marten, Henry in Thomas, Keith and Penningston, D. H. (eds.), Puritans and Revolutionaries, Oxford 1978, 126Google Scholar.

27 Ford, Alan, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590–1641, Frankfurt/M.-Berne-New York 1985Google Scholar.

28 Canny, ‘Why the Reformation failed in Ireland’, 447, 450.

29 Hammerstein-Robinson, H., ‘The continental education of Irish students in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I’, Historical Studies VIII, ed. Williams, T. Desmond, Dublin 1971, 153Google Scholar.

30 Barnard, T. C., Cromwellian Ireland, Oxford 1975, 182Google Scholar.

31 Nicholas Canny, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland, Hassocks 1976; Brendan Bradshaw has made the point repeatedly, but perhaps most importantly in The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century, Cambridge 1979, and in ‘Sword, word and strategy in the Reformation in Ireland’, The Historical Journal, xxi (1978), 475–502Google Scholar.

32 Pocock, J. G. A., ‘The limits and divisions of British History’, American Historical Review, Ixxxvii (1982), 311–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 There are references to a vernacular [Irish] translation of the New Testament in the library of the fourteenth-century Irish primate, Richard of Dundalk, but, prior to the printing press, circulation of vernacular scriptures was probably inconsequential in both nations. See Mason, H. J. Monck, The Life of William Bedell, London 1843, 285Google Scholar, for Richard of Dundalk’s vernacular manuscript.

34 Quoted in Stone, Lawrence, The Causes of the English Revolution, 1520–1642, London 1971, 82Google Scholar.

35 Haigh, C., ‘The recent historiography of the English Reformation’, The Historical Journal, xxv (1982), 995–1007CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Ellis, S., ‘England in the Tudor state’, The Historical Journal, xxvi (1983), 201–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Cowan, Ian, The Scottish Reformation: church and society in 16th century Scotland, London 1982Google Scholar; Lynch, Michael, Edinburgh and the Reformation, Edinburgh 1981Google Scholar; Wormald, Jenny, County Kirk and Community, Scotland 1470–1625, Toronto 1981Google Scholar; Sanderson, Margaret, Scottish Rural Society in the 16th Century, Edinburgh 1982Google Scholar.

37 Haigh, ‘Historiography of the English Reformation’, 999.

38 Brendan M. O’Bric, ‘Galway townsmen as the owners of land in Connacht, 1585–1641’, unpublished University College Galway M.A. dissertation, 1973, 153.

39 Ibid., 154.

40 Canny, ‘Why the Reformation failed in Ireland’, 449–50.