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Enforcing the Elizabethan settlement: the vicissitudes of Hugh Brady, bishop of Meath, 1563–84

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Helen Coburn Walshe
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Extract

Why the Reformation failed in Ireland was, until recent years, a matter for little debate. That it failed was beyond question and that its failure was inevitable was a premise seldom challenged. For many Irish historians, the root of its failure lay in the unswerving faith of a gallant people who resisted the attempts of a conquering force to impose upon them a creed at once heretical and foreign. Indeed, it was not until Brendan Bradshaw initiated a whole new approach to the history of the sixteenth century that this kind of view began to be firmly discarded. Others, like Nicholas Canny and, more recently, Steven Ellis and Alan Ford, have joined Bradshaw in questioning some of the old orthodoxies. The result of these endeavours has been, above all, to uncover the fact that the course of the Reformation in Ireland and the reasons for its failure were infinitely more complex than we once believed and, rather unexpectedly, one of the most tantalising issues raised by the debates which Bradshaw’s work has provoked has been the problem of precisely when the Reformation may be said to have failed in Ireland. Bradshaw and Canny have conflicting answers to that question and some of them will be considered here.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 104 , November 1989 , pp. 352 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1989

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References

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49 Craike to Dudley, 30 Apr. 1561 (ibid., 63/3/62).

50 Wrothe and Arnold to privy council, 16 Mar. 1564 (ibid., 63/10/34).

51 Brady to Cecil, 14 Mar. 1564 (ibid., 63/10/30).

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid.

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58 Ibid.

59 Brady to Cecil, 16 May 1565 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/13/39).

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69 Sidney to queen, 28 Apr. 1578 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/55/38).

70 Sidney to privy council, 13 Apr. 1566 (ibid., 63/17/8).

71 Pelham to Walsingham, 7 Dec. 1579 (ibid., 63/69/46).

72 Sidney to queen, 28 Apr. 1578 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/55/38).

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80 Ibid.

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82 Cal. pat. rolls Ire., Eliz., p. 489.

83 Ibid.

84 Ibid.

85 Loftus to queen, 17 May 1565 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/13/42).

86 Ibid.

87 Walshe, ‘Life & career of Hugh Brady’, pp 63–89; Walshe, Helen Coburn, ‘Responses to the protestant reformation in sixteenth-century Meath’ in Ríocht na Midhe, viii (1987- ), pp 97–110 Google Scholar.

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89 Brady to Cecil, 14 Mar. 1564 (ibid.).

90 Brady to Cecil, 14 Sept. 1566 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/19/13).

91 Loftus to Cecil, 3 Sept. 1566 (ibid., 63/19/1).

92 As above, n. 90.

93 Bradshaw, ‘Sword, word & strategy’, pp 476–88.

94 Potter, G.R., ‘The egg that Luther hatched’ in Hay, Denis (ed.), The age of the Renaissance (London, 1967), p. 141 Google ScholarPubMed.

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99 Weston to Cecil, 3 Apr. 1568 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/24/2).

100 Brady to Cecil, 16 May 1565 (ibid., 63/13/39).

101 Brady to Cecil, 10 Jan. 1565 (ibid., 63/12/17).

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107 Brady to Cecil, 16 May 1565 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/13/39).

108 ‘Articles’ exhibited by Oliver Sutton (ibid., 63/15/54).

109 Brady (ed.), State papers concerning Ir. eh., pp 4–7.

110 Report on the MSS of Lord de Lisle and Dudley preserved at Penshurst (H.M.C., 6 vols, London, 1925–66), ii, 94.

111 Deputy and council to English privy council, 22 Nov. 1566 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/19/55).

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114 Lancaster to Burleigh, 1 Feb. 1572 (ibid., 63/35/15).

115 For Walsingham’s views, see Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement, pp 198–200.

116 Lord Chancellor Gerrard’s ‘Notes of his report on Ireland’ in Anal. Hib., no. 2 (1931), p. 133.

117 Brady to Sidney, 13 May 1577 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/58/16).

118 Wallop to Walsingham, 8 Mar. 1581 (ibid., 63/81/16).

119 Brady to Walsingham, 11 May 1582 (ibid., 63/92/32).

120 Brady to Walsingham, 6 Dec. 1581 (ibid., 63/87/6); Trollope to Walsingham, 12 Sept. 1581 (ibid., 63/85/39).

121 Brady to Walsingham, 11 May 1582 (ibid., 63/92/32).

122 Fiants Ire., Eliz., no. 3983.

123 Wallop to Walsingham, 24 Oct. 1581 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/85/31).

124 Brady to Walsingham, 5 Nov. 1582 (ibid., 63/97/19).

125 Ibid.

126 Brady to Sidney, 12 May 1577 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/58/16).

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129 Brian MacGeoghan to Walter Hope, 6 Dec. 1583 (ibid., 63/106/2).

130 Ibid.

131 Walshe, ‘Life & career of Hugh Brady’, pp 59–89; Brady, John, ‘Father Christopher Cusack and the Irish college of Douai, 1594–1624’ in O’Brien, Sylvester (ed.), Measgra i gCuimhne Mhichíl Uí Chléirigh (Dublin, 1944), pp 98–107 Google Scholar.

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133 Ibid., p. 85.

134 Canny, ‘Why the Reformation failed’, pp 440–45.

135 Ibid. For the Counter-Reformation, see Corish, Irish catholic experience; idem, The catholic community in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Dublin, 1981); Lennon, Colm, ‘The Counter-Reformation in Ireland’ in Brady, & Gillespie, (eds), Natives & newcomers, pp 75–92 Google Scholar.

136 Ford, Protestant reformation in Ire., esp. ch. 1; Bottigheimer, Karl, ‘The failure of the Reformation in Ireland: une question bien posée’ in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, xxxvi (1985), pp 196–207 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

137 Cited by Bottigheimer, loc. cit., p. 199.

138 Cal. S.P. Ire., 1600, p. 273.

139 Sidney to queen, 28 Apr. 1576 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/55/38).

140 See Walshe, ‘Life & career of Hugh Brady’, pp 254–6.

141 Ford, Protestant reformation in Ire., ch. 1; idem, ‘The protestant reformation in Ireland’ in Brady & Gillespie (eds), Natives & newcomers, pp 50–74.

142 Ford, ‘Protestant reformation in Ire.’, pp 63–4.

143 E.g. Brady to Walsingham, 6 Dec. 1581 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/87/6). For Ussher and Bedell, see Bottigheimer, ‘The failure of the Reformation’.