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34 - The book in Ireland from the Tudor re-conquest to the battle of the Boyne

from BEYOND LONDON: PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION, RECEPTION

By
Robert Welch
Edited by
John Barnard  and
D. F. McKenzie
With
Maureen Bell
Robert Welch
Affiliation:
University of Ulster
John Barnard
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
D. F. McKenzie
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Maureen Bell
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Summary

Authority and change

The history of the book in Ireland must, before it does anything else, take account of the continuing importance of manuscript tradition and the slow development of dependence upon the printed book in this period. Sixteenth-century Ireland became a kingdom under Henry VIII as part of a renewed attempt to bring Ireland under more complete and extensive British governance. This Tudor re-conquest was driven by two different but complementary ambitions: Henry, and subsequently his daughter Elizabeth, wanted to centralize authority throughout the islands of Britain and Ireland under their own administration in London; and they wished to further the reform of the Church in England and Ireland by making the crown the head of the Church as well as of the State. The achievement of these twin aims was to lay the foundations of a new, energetic Protestant polity; a vision in which Britain and Ireland were a conjoined imperium whose destiny was to bring into being a society which reflected the ideas of the Reformation under a settled form of authoritative government.

The printed book was one of the major instruments in the furtherance of the Reformation: people were encouraged to read the Bible for themselves and there flowed from the new presses all over Protestant Europe works of theology, philosophy, and biblical exegesis. England took a highly active part in this de-mystification of faith: for example, Richard Hooker’s Of the lawes of ecclesiasticall politie (1593–7) framed the Tudor concept which intertwined the settlement of the state with the Church’s interests and the rights and duties of the citizen.

Keywords

printed bookGaelic culturemanuscript traditionbattle of the BoyneTudor re-conquest
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain
, pp. 701 - 718
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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References

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