The Early Tudor Reformations in the Irish Pale

Abstract

This paper highlights striking commonalities between the pre-Reformation Church in England and that in the Pale around Dublin, and argues that the eventual failure of the Tudor reformations in the Pale was not inevitable. It shows that while the Henrician Reformation encountered very considerable opposition at first, the Pale's secular and ecclesiastical elites subsequently endorsed a moderated religious settlement wherein papal authority was abrogated. They acquiesced in the first Book of Common Prayer. However, the crown's deputies were loth to enforce religious change and Protestantism won very few adherents as late as 1553.