Reformation in Tudor Ireland

What did it mean to govern and to serve in Europe in the age of Reformation? This book tackles this question with an innovative study of political theology and princely governance in Ireland under Henry VIII. Charting a new approach to the Reformation, it shows how efforts to govern Ireland in the early days of Tudor empire enduringly shaped the island's Christian and colonial politics of 'reform'. James Leduc demonstrates that Henry VIII's break with Rome positioned novel forms of Christian imperial kingship and sovereignty in Anglo-Irish affairs. This was the beginning of Tudor imperial monarchy, and though older understandings of royal power and 'reform' persisted, it helped unsettle anew key pillars of political life and culture that had long troubled English government in Ireland. A reorganization of Christian order, the Reformation not only created new criteria for governing Christians and for serving God, king, and commonwealth, but also galvanized into new forms older English ambitions to complete the conquest of Ireland. The consequences for both the stability of English rule and Irish engagements with the Tudor state were steep. Ultimately, The Reformation in Tudor Ireland recentres Henry VIII's reign and European traditions of thought in our accounts of Tudor Irish history while reassessing how deeply Christianity structured sixteenth-century politics. It thereby opens new perspectives on Tudor imperial monarchy and the state that foreground how intersections of religion, government, and sovereignty defined ways of being Christian in early modern Europe.

James Leduc is an independent researcher at the Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec in Montreal. His work has appeared in Historical Research, The Historical Journal, and Irish Historical Studies. He was previously a Fonds de recherche du Québec Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Cambridge, where he was also a College Research Associate at Emmanuel College.