Treatise writing and the expansion of Tudor government in mid-Elizabethan Ireland, 1565–1578

Abstract

This chapter discusses a wide array of policy developments in mid-Elizabethan Ireland including drives to colonise parts of Ulster and Munster, to establish new systems of crown taxation, to extend the institutions of the English state into the more remote parts of Ireland and to spread the Protestant faith. In doing so it argues that there was a major expansion of the English state in Ireland at this time. This led to an increasing need to find new ways of financing the state apparatus there and the implementation of policies designed to bring more remote parts of the country under control, for instance by establishing colonies in north-east Ulster. It also argues that there was an intensifying of the drive to protestantise the country at this time, in large part owing to the excommunication of Elizabeth I in 1570. Throughout the ‘reform’ treatises written at this time are examined in order to fully examine how these policies were being debated and promoted by officials in Ireland.