Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Notes on the text
- Political map of sixteenth-century Ireland circa 1534
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN BRITISH HISTORY
- Introduction
- 1 Chimneys in summer
- 2 Martial men and their discontents
- 3 The limits of allegiance: English martial men, Europe and the Elizabethan regime
- 4 The captains and the Irish context
- 5 The limits of imperium: martial men and government
- 6 The limits of rhetoric: the captains and violence in Elizabethan Ireland to 1588
- 7 Unlimited indemnity: delegates versus viceroys
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - The limits of rhetoric: the captains and violence in Elizabethan Ireland to 1588
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Notes on the text
- Political map of sixteenth-century Ireland circa 1534
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN BRITISH HISTORY
- Introduction
- 1 Chimneys in summer
- 2 Martial men and their discontents
- 3 The limits of allegiance: English martial men, Europe and the Elizabethan regime
- 4 The captains and the Irish context
- 5 The limits of imperium: martial men and government
- 6 The limits of rhetoric: the captains and violence in Elizabethan Ireland to 1588
- 7 Unlimited indemnity: delegates versus viceroys
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The notoriety of Colonel Humphrey Gilbert's 1569 campaign in Munster is beyond dispute. The stark image of rebels forced to submit to Gilbert by shuffling on their knees through an avenue marked by the decapitated heads of their loved ones (as described by Thomas Churchyard in his general rehearsal of warres) will never lose its power to shock. But even Churchyard, writing ten years after the event, seems to have realised that Gilbert's flamboyant conduct begged some questions, hence the quickness with which he offered a list of explanations and justifications for his subject's behaviour. First, he turned the charge of cruelty back against the Irish, stating that Gilbert ‘did but then begin that order with them, which they had in effect ever tofore used toward the English’. Next, he vindicated the Colonel's approach by pointing to its positive results: the widespread fear that these actions engendered ensured that more forts were surrendered to him in one day ‘than by strong hand would have been won in a year’. Gilbert's most outrageous actions – the grisly carneval of the decapitations, for instance – were motivated, we are told, ‘ad terrorem, the dead feeling nothing the more pains thereby: and yet did it bring great terror to the people when they saw the heads of their dead fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolk and friends, lie on the ground before their faces’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Martial Power and Elizabethan Political CultureMilitary Men in England and Ireland, 1558–1594, pp. 200 - 249Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009