By Alan Ford
Published in Reformation, January 2026.
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Abstract

Modern Ireland repeatedly exposed the limits of English religious policy. In England, anti-recusancy legislation, though always delicately balanced between the sweeping rhetoric of its enactment and the messy compromises of its enforcement, nevertheless had by the end of the sixteenth century helped reduce Catholicism to a small though influential minority. But in Ireland by 1600 the country was overwhelmingly Catholic, and determined to remain so. This posed a dilemma for English governors. Those in Dublin wanted to use the full power of the state – finally extended to the whole island after the victory over the native Irish in the Nine Years War – to impose conformity. Those in England, worried at the danger of alienating the Catholic population and the threat of further rebellion, repeatedly reined in the authorities in Dublin arguing, whether by conviction or pragmatism, that persuasion was better than coercion. This paper analyzes the competing religious and political perspectives of this three-decade-long attempt to turn Ireland Protestant, and places it in the wider context of the reluctant, Realpolitik acceptance of toleration by European states with divided religious loyalties.