The Chief Governors

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Focusing on the conflicts between Tudor governors and native lords in sixteenth-century Ireland, the book challenges conventional views that attribute these struggles to a deliberate Tudor strategy. Instead, it posits that they stemmed from a failed legal reform and cultural assimilation effort that had succeeded in other Tudor regions. The author examines how a distinct, centralized administrative style emerged under various pressures, ultimately undermining reform goals and fostering alienation and hostility, contrary to the intended outcomes.