¹ I employ the term “Gaelic” here to denote Ireland’s native inhabitants. While not inaccurate, it should be noted that “Gaelic,” or the tautological coupling “Gaelic-Irish,” most often employed by historians to describe this group, was not contemporary—significantly, this population was normally referred to as “Irish” or the “Irishry” in contemporary English sources; the word “Gaelic” did not enter into the English language until the end of the sixteenth century; Oxford English Dictionary (OED), 2nd ed., s.v. “Gaelic,” http://www.oed.com.

² Calendar of Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland, Henry VIII–18th Elizabeth, ed. Morrin, James (Dublin, 1861), 71Google Scholar. The rendering in English of Gaelic personal and familial names poses some difficulty. I have chosen, in an effort to maintain consistency, to employ well-established English forms of Gaelic surnames—MacGillapatrick rather than Mac Giolla Phádraig, O’Toole rather than Ó Tuathail—and Anglicized forms of Irish Christian names and epithets: Hugh rather than Aodh and More rather than Mór.

³ That a leading peer like Piers Butler (ca.1467–1539), first earl of Ossory and eighth earl of Ormond, had a Gaelic mother—Sadhbh (Sabina), daughter of Donnell Reagh MacMurrough-Kavanagh—did not matter; David Finnegan, “Piers Butler,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), http://www.oxforddnb.com. For the debate surrounding whether this population should be identified as English or Anglo-Irish in the late medieval and early Tudor periods, see Ellis, S. G., “‘More Irish than the Irish themselves’? The ‘Anglo-Irish’ in Tudor Ireland,” History Ireland 7, no. 1 (1998): 22–26Google Scholar; Nicholls, K. W., “Worlds Apart? The Ellis Two-Nation Theory on Late Medieval Ireland,” History Ireland 7, no. 2 (1999): 22–26Google Scholar. See now also Maginn, Christopher, “Gaelic Ireland’s English Frontiers in the Late Middle Ages,” Royal Irish Academy, sec. C, 110 (2010): 173–90.Google Scholar

⁴ Bradshaw, Brendan, The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ For this in general, see Maczak, Antoni, “The Nobility-State Relationship,” in Power, Elites and State Building, ed. Reinhard, Wolgang (Oxford, 1996), 189–206.Google Scholar

⁶ Bernard, G. W., ed., The Tudor Nobility (Manchester, 1992).Google Scholar

⁷ See, e.g., Curtis, Edmund, A History of Ireland: From Earliest Times to 1922 (London, 2004), 150.Google Scholar

⁸ Bunreacht na hÉireann [Constitution of Ireland], Article 40, 2 (i–ii).

⁹ Asch, Ronald, Nobilities in Transition, 1550–1700: Courtiers and Rebels in Britain and Europe (London, 2003).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Kane, Brendan, The Politics of Honour in Britain and Ireland, 1541–1641 (Cambridge, 2009)Google Scholar, and “From Irish Eineach to British Honor? Noble Honor and High Politics in Early Modern Ireland, 1500–1650,” History Compass 7, no. 2 (2009): 414–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maginn, Christopher, “The Limitations of Tudor Reform: The Policy of ‘Surrender and Regrant’ and the O’Rourkes,” Breifne: Journal of Cumann Seanchais Bhréifne 11, no. 43 (2007): 458–59.Google Scholar

¹¹ For recent studies of individual members of the peerage of Ireland in the Tudor period, see, e.g., Carey, Vincent, Surviving the Tudors: The “Wizard” Earl of Kildare and English Rule in Ireland, 1537–1586 (Dublin, 2002)Google Scholar; Edwards, David, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642: The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Dublin, 2003)Google Scholar; and McCormack, Anthony, The Earldom of Desmond, 1463–1583: The Decline and Crisis of a Feudal Lordship (Dublin, 2005)Google Scholar. For a study of a broader cross section of the Tudor peerage in Ireland, see now Power, Gerald, “The Nobility of the English Pale in Tudor Ireland, 1496–1566” (PhD diss., National University of Ireland, Galway, 2008)Google Scholar. The peerage of Ireland under the Stuarts is the subject of Jane Ohlmeyer’s current research; in the meantime, see Mayes, Charles, “The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage,” English Historical Review 73 (1958): 227–51.Google Scholar

¹² Braddick, Michael, State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), 340–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ I use the term “polity” here to mean a particular form of government or political organization, rather than a state as a unitary political and administrative entity: OED, s.v. “polity.”

¹⁴ “State of Ireland and Plan for its Reformation” (1515), The National Archives (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO), State Papers (SP) 60/1/9 (printed in State Papers, Henry VIII, 11 vols. [London, 1830–52], 2:29; hereafter SP Hen. VIII). I am grateful to Gerald Power for drawing this piece of evidence to my attention.

¹⁵ For Gaelic society at the start of the Tudor period, see Nicholls, K. W., Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland in the Later Middle Ages (Dublin, 2003)Google Scholar; Simms, Katherine, From Kings to Warlords: The Changing Political Structure of Gaelic Ireland in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1987)Google Scholar; Duffy, P. J., Edwards, David, and FitzPatrick, Elizabeth, eds., Gaelic Ireland, c. 1250–c. 1650: Land, Lordship and Settlement (Dublin, 2001).Google Scholar

¹⁶ “State of Ireland and Plan for its Reformation,” TNA: PRO, SP 60/1/9. There are no references to such distinctions in the surviving Irish sources, though Robert Beale, the Elizabethan antiquary and administrator, makes brief reference to the fact that “some Irish” lords “call them selves shages, that is dukes”: “Collections relating to Ireland,” British Library (BL), Add. MSS 48015 Yelverton MS 16, 6 fols. 219–20v. For a later English sketch of “the Irishe nobility in Irland,” see BL, Add. MSS 48107 Yelverton MS 17, 14 fols. 170–71v.

¹⁷ SP Hen. VIII, 2:35, 52; Quinn, D. B., “Henry VIII and Ireland, 1509–1534,” Irish Historical Studies 12 (1960–61): 318–44.Google Scholar

¹⁸ SP Hen. VIII, 2:35, 55.

¹⁹ Ibid., 2:59–61.

²⁰ Ibid., 2:64. Surrey added that MacCarthy “hath shewed to me a charter graunted to his grauntfather, by the Kinges noble progenytours, under the Great Seale of England.” MacCarthy’s possession of this “grant of English liberty” would explain why in Henry’s letter to the unnamed Irish lord he referred to him as a “faithfull subject.”

²¹ Privy Council (in Ireland) to Thomas Cromwell, 26 June 1537, TNA: PRO, SP 60/4/29.

²² Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts Preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth, ed. Brewer, J. S. and Bullen, William, 6 vols. (London, 1867–73), 1:129–30Google Scholar; MacGillapatrick’s submission, 8 November 1537, TNA: PRO, SP 60/5/41.

²³ Bradshaw, Irish Constitutional Revolution, 238–40; Ellis, S. G., Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 1447–1603: English Expansion and the End of Gaelic Rule (London, 1998), 154.Google Scholar

²⁴ Calendar of Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland, Henry VIII–18th Elizabeth, 71.

²⁵ Lord Deputy and Council to Henry VIII, 28 June 1541, TNA: PRO, SP 60/10/18; “The names of them that were p[re]se[n]t att the p[ar]liament in Ireland,” 28 June 1541, TNA: PRO, SP 60/10/18(i). It was not uncommon for men of Gaelic ancestry to sit in the Lords in the late Middle Ages as spiritual peers, but special license from the chief governor of Ireland was required for them to do so; see Otway-Ruthven, A. J., A History of Medieval Ireland (London, 1980), 292–93.Google Scholar

²⁶ King to MacWilliam Burke, 1 May 1541, TNA: PRO, SP 60/10/10; King to Lord Deputy and Council, 26 March 1541, TNA: PRO, SP 60/10/6.

²⁷ O’Neill was created earl of Tyrone, and his son, Matthew, was recognized as his successor and granted the title baron of Dungannon, at the ceremony at Greenwich 1 October 1542. King Henry also knighted Denis and Arthur Magennis: see Rymer, Thomas, Feodora: Conventions, Literae et … Acta Publica Inter Reges Anglie et Alios, 17 vols. (London, 1728), 15:7–9Google Scholar; Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, 1:199. O’Brien was created earl of Thomond and baron of Inchiquinn; his nephew, Donough, was recognized as his successor and made baron of Ibracken 1 July 1543 at Greenwich. The title Inchiquinn was to revert to Murrough O’Brien’s son—Dermod—upon his death: see Rymer, , Feodora, 14:797–99Google Scholar; Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, 1:199; Christopher Maginn, “Murrough O’Brien,” ODNB.

²⁸ Brian O’Connor—Cahir O’Connor’s brother—was to be created Viscount Offaly; Malachy O’Reilly, Viscount Cavan; and Barnaby O’Rourke, Viscount Dromaher. Privy Council to Lord Deputy and Council, 4 June 1545, TNA: PRO, SP 60/12/10; Henry VIII to Lord Deputy and Council, 8 September 1541, TNA: PRO, SP 60/10/34; Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, 1:195–96.

²⁹ Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, 1:136–37, 195–96, 198–99.

³⁰ Henry VIII to MacWilliam Burke, 1 May 1541, TNA: PRO, SP 60/10/10.

³¹ See table 1.

³² Calendar of Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland, Henry VIII–18th Elizabeth, 342; form of MacCarthy’s oath, 24 June 1565, TNA: PRO, SP 63/13/76.

³³ James, Mervyn, “English Politics and the Concept of Honor, 1485–1642,” in Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England, ed. James, Mervyn (Cambridge, 1986), 308–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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³⁵ de Gayangos, Pascual ed., Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers, Relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain, Henry VIII, 1542–1543: Preserved in the Archives at Simancas, Vienna, Brussels, and Elsewhere (London, 1895), 363.Google Scholar

³⁶ Loades, D. M., The Mid-Tudor Crisis, 1545–1565 (London, 1992), 28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ Haigh, Chris, Elizabeth I (London, 2000), 54–55.Google Scholar

³⁸ See table 2.

³⁹ Queen Mary to O’Carroll, 12 March 1558, TNA: PRO, SP 62/2/22.

⁴⁰ Instructions to the earl of Sussex on his return to Ireland, 24 May 1561, TNA: PRO, SP 63/3/78.

⁴¹ Queen Elizabeth to Sussex, 27 May 1561, TNA: PRO, SP 63/3/83; William Cecil to Sussex, 30 May 1561, BL, Cotton MS, Titus B XIII, 21, fol. 19. Neither the commission nor the letters patent have survived.

⁴² Memoranda of letters to be prepared for Sussex’s despatch, May 1561, TNA: PRO, SP 63/3/76; William Cecil to Sussex, 28 May 1561, BL, Cotton MS, Titus B XIII, 17; Sussex to Cecil, 17 July 1561, TNA: PRO, SP 63/4/23.

⁴³ Instructions to the earl of Sussex on his return to Ireland, 24 May 1561, TNA: PRO, SP 63/3/78 (quotation); Queen Elizabeth to Sussex, 27 May 1561, TNA: PRO, SP 63/3/83. For Shane O’Neill, See Brady, Ciaran, Shane O’Neill (Dundalk, 1996).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Cecil to Sussex, 19 June 1561, BL, Cotton MS, Titus B XIII, 21, fol. 17.

⁴⁵ Sir Henry Sidney’s Opinions on the minutes of instructions devised for him, July 1565, TNA: PRO, SP 63/14/3.

⁴⁶ Privy Council to the Lord Deputy and Council, 24 June 1549, TNA: PRO, SP 61/2/46.

⁴⁷ Commission to the authorities in Ireland, 22 June 1565, TNA: PRO, SP 63/13/70.

⁴⁸ Sidney’s requests to be propounded in council, 22 December 1575, TNA: PRO, SP 63/54/22; memoranda for Ireland, 27 October 1578, TNA: PRO, SP 63/63/9.

⁴⁹ Privy Council to Sidney, 23 January 1576, TNA: PRO, SP 63/55/5. Turlough Luineach O’Neill’s grandfather, Art Oge, was the first earl of Tyrone’s half brother: Henry Jeffries, “Sir Turlough Luineach O’Neill,” ODNB.

⁵⁰ Sidney to the Privy Council, 27 February 1576, TNA: PRO, SP 63/55/19.

⁵¹ Privy Council to Sidney, 10 July 1576, TNA: PRO, SP 63/56/7; draft (corrected by Burghley) of Privy Council to Sidney, 10 July 1576, TNA: PRO, SP 63/56/8.

⁵² Calendar of Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Elizabeth I, 1575–1578 (London, 1982), 547–48 (nos. 3709–11)Google Scholar. Not all the projected nobles were Gaelic: a year earlier, Drury, Gerrard, and Nicholas Malby had also been empowered to elevate SirBurke, John, “alias Matthew Ewghter Bowrk,” to the peerage as the “baron of Ardenerie”: Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Elizabeth I, 1578–1580 (London, 1986), 28 (no. 229).Google Scholar

⁵³ Nicholas Malby to Walsingham, 25 May 1582, TNA: PRO, SP 63/92/65.

⁵⁴ There were suggestions drawn up in early 1589 to create fourteen new peers in England, but only half were raised to the peerage: “A choice of such persons as Her Majesty is pleased to nobilitate,” 24 January 1589, TNA: PRO, SP 12/222/33.

⁵⁵ Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, 1:365–66.

⁵⁶ Tyrone was given “prioritie of place,” ahead of the earls of Thomond and Clanrickard, by virtue of the fact that his grandfather’s patent antedated the other two earls’ patents created in Henry VIII’s reign; see Lord Deputy and Council to the Privy Council, 30 June 1585, TNA: PRO, SP 63/117/52; cf. Morgan, Hiram, Tyrone’s Rebellion: Outbreak of the Nine Years War in Tudor Ireland (London, 1993), 102.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Copy of privy seal issued by Queen Elizabeth to Lord Chancellor Hatton, 10 May 1587, TNA: PRO, SP 63/129/75; Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland 18th to 45th of Elizabeth, ed. Morrin, James (Dublin, 1862), 123.Google Scholar

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⁶² Kamen, Henry, Early Modern European Society (London, 2000), 3.Google Scholar

⁶³ Lord Deputy and Council to Henry VIII, 1 September 1542, TNA: PRO, SP 60/10/73.

⁶⁴ Maginn, Christopher, “Civilizing” Gaelic Leinster: The Extension of Tudor Rule in the O’Byrne and O’Toole Lordships (Dublin, 2005), 65.Google Scholar

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⁶⁶ Instructions by King and Council to Sir Anthony St. Leger, July 1550, TNA: PRO, SP 61/2/57.

⁶⁷ Commission signed by the queen, December 1565, BL, Lansdowne MS 8, no. 41.

⁶⁸ Maginn, Christopher, “‘Surrender and Regrant Mark II’: The Indenture between Brian O’Rourke, Chief of West Breifne, and Sir Nicholas Malby (1577),” Breifne: Journal of Cumann Seanchais Bhréifne 11, no. 42 (2006): 227–34.Google Scholar

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⁷⁰ Calendar of Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Elizabeth I, 1575–1578, 548 (no. 3711).

⁷¹ Alford, Stephen, Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I (New Haven, CT, 2008), 166Google Scholar. See also the detailed description of the creation of Robert Dudley as baron of Denbigh and earl of Leicester before Elizabeth at St. James’s Palace, 29 September 1564, TNA: PRO, SP 12/34/64.

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⁷⁵ MacGeoghegan, History of Ireland, 499; MacManus, Seumas, The Story of the Irish Race: A Popular History of Ireland (New York, 1921), 386.Google Scholar

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⁷⁸ Royal Irish Academy, MS C iv 1 (540), fol. 218r (printed and trans. in James Carney, ed., “A Tract on the O’Rourkes,” Celtica 1 [1950]: 260); Maginn, “The Limitations of Tudor Reform,” 439–40.

⁷⁹ Annals of Loch Cé, s.a. 1543.

⁸⁰ Annals of the Four Masters, s.a. 1551, 1596.

⁸¹ Maginn, “Civilizing” Gaelic Leinster, 60.

⁸² O’Donnell to the King, 14 April 1542, TNA: PRO, SP 60/10/56.

⁸³ Christopher Maginn, “Shane O’Neill,” ODNB; a memorial for instruction of Sir Thomas Cusack, 20 October 1563, TNA: PRO, SP 63/9/38.

⁸⁴ O’Neill’s offers, 4 July 1579, TNA: PRO, SP 63/67/21.

⁸⁵ Turlough Luineach’s petitions to her majesty, 5 July 1582, TNA: PRO, SP 63/94/9.

⁸⁶ Particulars of Murrough O’Flaherty’s requests to the Privy Council, 27 March 1582, TNA: PRO, SP 63/90/48.

⁸⁷ Edwards, David, “Collaboration without Anglicisation: The MacGiollapadraig Lordship and Tudor Reform,” in Gaelic Ireland, c. 1250–c. 1650: Land, Lordship and Settlement, ed. Duffy, Patrick, Edwards, David, and FitzPatrick, Elizabeth (Dublin, 2001), 77–97Google Scholar, and “The MacGiolla Padraigs of Upper Ossory, 1532–1641,” in Laois History and Society: Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County, ed. Lane, Pádraig G. and Nolan, William (Dublin, 1999), 327–76.Google Scholar

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⁸⁹ Nicholas White to Burghley, 23 December 1581, TNA: PRO, SP 63/87/55.

⁹⁰ William Pelham to the Queen, 18 May 1580, TNA: PRO, SP 63/73/17; Nicholas White to Burghley, 31 May 1580, TNA: PRO, SP 63/73/38. For a discussion of the changing identity of the English of Ireland, see Canny, Nicholas, “Identity Formation in Ireland: The Emergence of the Anglo-Irish,” in Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500–1800, ed. Canny, Nicholas and Pagden, Andrew (Princeton, NJ, 1987), 159–212.Google Scholar

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⁹² Mayor and Corporation of Waterford to Cecil, 8 July 1569, TNA: PRO, SP 63/29/5; Lord Deputy to Burghley, 4 October 1595, TNA: PRO, SP 63/183/71. A year earlier, Sir George Carew wrote that Tyrone “evermore hadd a thirstie desire to be called Oneale, a name more in price to him, than to be entituled Caesar”: “Treatise on Ireland,” 13 April 1594, TNA: PRO, SP 63/174/13(i).

⁹³ John McGurk, “Donough O’Brien,” ODNB.

⁹⁴ Canny, Nicholas, “The Treaty of Mellifont, 1603,” Irish Sword 9 (1970): 380–99Google Scholar; Russell, C. W. and Prendergast, John, eds., Calendar of State Papers Relating to Ireland of the Reign of James I, 1603–1606 (London, 1872), 79–80Google Scholar. Tyrconnell, it is worth noting, was so created in Ireland.