The Kildare rebellion of 1534 has long been recognised by historians as a central event in early modern Ireland and indeed modern Irish history in general. Signalling the collapse of aristocratic rule and the onset of the conquest of Ireland by the Tudor state, this watershed in Irish history has largely been understood through the State Papers. Acknowledged to overemphasise the critics of Kildare, the near exclusivity of this archive has left an imbalanced, teleological impression. More insidiously, having obscured the circumstances surrounding the rebellion, the heightened significance of state correspondence has been to the detriment of other materials and methodologies. Indeed, with the emergence of the State Papers and the elevated magnitude of the rebellion, there was a strong sense that a critical epoch both began and ended at this juncture. Furthermore, this imbalance has been compounded by their highly selective arrangement and publication in the 1830s as the State Papers King Henry the Eighth. This canon of documents remains central to the existing historiography but as invaluable as they are, the State Papers are at once limited in their ability to explain events and also deeply misleading concerning the events they describe.

This study seeks to break free from the prison house of the State Paper hegemony. Recent studies have left an opening for a greater consideration of alternative approaches and often overlooked, fragmentary material. By uncovering alternative evidence in literary culture, material culture and oral culture (that is literary texts, poems, paintings, architecture), which have been neglected in conventional scholarship, it not only brings to light a whole set of dimensions obscured by the intensely political focus of the State Papers, it also offers a radically original way of reading the material therein. Out of this there has emerged a new understanding of the struggle for mastery in early sixteenth-century Ireland. This intense rivalry and push for supremacy between the leading old colonial nobility took place within a far broader and far more contested milieu than has hitherto been appreciated.

Older uncritical accounts, assuming that 1534 was part of some grand process of state formation under the so-called ‘new monarchs’ have long since been discounted.