Queen Elizabeth I - Her Affairs with Ireland

Upon her ascendancy to the throne of England in 1558 - having survived two months' imprisonment in the Tower of London at the hand of her half sister Mary Tudor four years earlier - Elizabeth found herself hostage to the volatile political, cultural and social unrest in Ireland. Indeed, Ireland's existing government in Dublin was wholly ineffective, and Irish society was divided into warring and otherwise competing lordships, very much unlike the situation elsewhere in Western Europe, where traditional lordships had, for the most part, knuckled under to the power of the emerging monarchies. The ongoing Irish chaos posed a threat both to English interests in Ireland, and to the safety and security of the England itself.

Meanwhile, at the time of her ascension to the throne, Elizabeth's policy towards Ireland was much the same as the approach taken by her father:...
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