In one of the earliest of his signal contributions to the rethinking of early modern Scotland, in particular, and of the comparative history of the Western European archipelago in general, Allan Macinnes presented a new and challenging account of the way in which the principal dynasties of Scottish feudal society gradually but successfully transformed themselves into a typical European aristocracy. In his Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart (1996) Macinnes offered a sustained analysis of the processes through which so many of the traditional dynasties achieved this transformation.

His was not a simple account, nor a pretty one. Instead it meticulously detailed how the great clanship dynasts gradually divested themselves of their traditional status as leaders and protectors of their dynastic and feudal dependants; and, by exploiting the opportunities supplied by the procedures of written Scottish law, of economic advantage, of political alliance and connection, and also by sheer coercion, how they successfully transformed themselves into a powerful and wealthy capitalist aristocracy comparable in status, character and outlook to their peers south of the Tweed. Macinnes's bold analysis not only offered a powerful critique of the sentimental and nostalgic image of the old Scottish nobility as propagated by writers as influential as Scott and Stevenson; also, with appropriate recognition of important regional and cultural variations, it had the advantage of supplying parallels with the history of the crisis and recovery of the English aristocracy as traced in the seminal work of Lawrence Stone.

In this Macinnes was soon not to be alone. In the late 1990s and early 2000s a spate of research, notably by Keith Brown, Jane Dawson and Alison Cathcart, which, even while occasionally disagreeing with his interpretative emphases, confirmed his contention that the real objective of historical exploration should not be on their apparent submission to the power of the Stuart monarchy, but actually on the ways in which the Scottish nobility succeeded, with remarkable success, in adapting themselves and consolidating their status in the new world of seventeenth-century politics. In this, as Brown has persuasively argued, the experience of the Scottish nobility was not exceptional, but followed closely not only that of their English neighbours but also that of the Western European nobility as a whole.

Why was Shane O'Neill attainted some two years after his death by means of a statute of attainder passed by the Irish parliament which met in January 1569? The answer would appear to be as simple as the question. Shane was attainted because the crown wished to employ the easiest and most comprehensive way of confiscating all of his lands and rights of lordship and the lands and lordships of those, both among the O'Neills and among the other Ulster dynasties, who had pledged allegiance to him. It was a sly move, it has commonly been observed: for after actively opposing all of Shane's tenurial and feudal claims during his lifetime, now that he was dead the English government chose after all to accept such claims at their fullest in order to extract the greatest possible yield. For those seduced by the pleasures of prosecution this mode of explanation has always been enough: perfidious Albion once again supplementing brute force with subtle legal subterfuge.

Yet however vicious and malign England's intentions towards Ireland may be presumed to have been in general, a moment's reflection will suggest that in this particular case the means chosen for such a design were remarkably clumsy. Not only was it unnecessary, as will be demonstrated below, it was also replete with concessions, implicit and explicit, that rendered it quite subversive of its own supposed purpose.

Bishop Nicholas French's dramatic, though retrospective, summary of the violent rupturing of Irish history which occurred in the middle years of the seventeenth century is so striking, so synoptic of the fundamental changes wrought during that epoch, that it has proved irresistible to writers seeking an appropriate expression to indicate a decisive terminal point signalling the end of one era and the beginning of another. Both as terminus ad quem and terminus a quo the years immediately surrounding Cromwell's campaign in Ireland have served historians remarkably well. They mark the final and well-nigh indisputable eclipse of the two great social and cultural groups whose complex interactions had determined the fundamental patterns of Irish history over the previous five centuries. As an internal political force in the land, the Gaelic Irish were now utterly destroyed, the few pockets of survival in Ulster, the midlands and in Munster which had been the loci of their final resistance now suppressed and their lands given over to English occupiers. The ‘Old English’ – as the descendants of the Anglo-Norman colonial community had for some time chosen to identify themselves – had likewise been brought low. The common fate of disempowerment, dispossession and dislocation which they were now to share with the native Irish served as an appropriate nemesis to the ambivalent and disingenuous relationship which they had deliberately maintained with their Gaelic neighbours over the previous centuries.