The period 1461 to 1603 is crucial in the determination of the character of modern Irish history It divides fairly evenly at 1534 into a first phase in which the medieval order reaches its culmination and into a second in which the destruction of much of that order is completed and the foundations for the modern colonial period are laid. In the first, life in all its aspects is variegated with separate and interpenetrating social and governmental groupings of considerable complexity.