Queen Mary died in 1558 and was succeeded by her half-sister, Elizabeth, who immediately set about restoring Protestant dominance. An Irish parliament met briefly in 1560, and passed an Act of Supremacy, confirming Elizabeth as head of the Irish church and requiring holders of various offices in Church and State to swear an oath accepting her as such . An Act of Uniformity imposed the new Book of Common Prayer on all clergy, although few people in Ireland understood the English language in which it was written, and church attendance was made compulsory. Although both Acts were implemented with discretion, so that there was no substantial religious persecution, resistance to the Protestant religion became a factor in the hostility of Irish and Old English rulers to the Tudor regime.

Ulster was to prove the most difficult province to subdue, but Elizabeth also faced resistance in other parts of the island. In 1569 James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, the able cousin of the fifteenth Earl of Desmond, led an unsuccessful rebellion after an English adventurer called Sir Peter Carew had laid claim to estates belonging to the Fitzgeralds and the Butlers. James then escaped to the continent, and in 1579 returned with a small force of Italians and Spaniards, together with a papal nuncio, to engage in 'a war for the Catholic religion'. The second Desmond rebellion was also defeated, but this time Munster was laid waste and much of the province was declared forfeit so that it could be planted by English settlers.

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From the Appletree Press title: A Little History of Ireland, click here for more information or here to buy the book from Amazon. Also from Appletree: A Short History of Ireland, available from Amazon.com. Click here for more information.