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John Bramhall’s other island: a Laudian solution to an Irish problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Jack P. Cunningham
Jack P. Cunningham*
Affiliation:
Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln
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Extract

When John Bramhall arrived on the shores of Ireland in 1633 to begin his new job as chaplain to the (also newly appointed) lord deputy, Thomas Wentworth, he was probably not yet forty years old. He immediately set about his role with the type of energy and ruthless devotion that came to characterise the Laudian regime that sent him. As John Morrill has indicated, nothing in the previous reign had prepared the Irish Protestant establishment ‘for the onslaught on their church to be mounted by William Laud.’ Historically, one of the problems with the Laudians is that while it is clear what they did, it is less clear why they did it. Typically, and shrewdly, they did not tend to be verbose concerning their motives.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 141 , May 2008 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2008

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