David Heffernan. “composition for cess” controversy & Old English in mid-Elizabethan Ireland by History Hub

'The “composition for cess” controversy and the position of the Old English in mid-Elizabethan Ireland, c.1575-84' by Dr David Heffernan (University College Cork).

It is widely appreciated that the Old English community of the Pale and beyond in Ireland became profoundly disaffected from crown rule during the reign of Elizabeth I, owing to, among other issues, their refusal to conform to state sponsored Protestantism and their supersession in high political office by the New English. Overshadowing all this was the burden imposed on this community to fund the advancing Tudor conquest of Ireland through the ‘cess’ or purveyance. Upon returning to the viceregal office in 1575 Sir Henry Sidney attempted an alternative system of taxation devised by the clerk of the privy council, Edmund Tremayne, known as ‘composition for cess’, whereby landholders in Ireland would compound to pay a fix rent in lieu of the ‘cess’. The animosity this aroused amongst the Old English and the constitutional controversy which ensued have been well noted in the historiography of the period. Yet the episode has typically been understood as having occurred in a bubble between 1576 and 1578. This paper argues that the ‘composition’ must be understood within the wider context of the crown’s relations with the Old English in the late sixteenth-century. Moreover unrest over the ‘composition’ and the ‘cess’ must be understood within the wider framework of discontent at government policy and official corruption in late Tudor Ireland. Finally, by extending discussion of the ‘composition’ into the mid-1580s it demonstrates that far from being a temporary ‘crisis’ unrest over the ‘composition’ persisted throughout the Desmond Rebellion and beyond.

The 6th Annual Tudor & Stuart Ireland Interdisciplinary Conference took place at NUI Galway in August, 2016. The conference was generously supported by: an NUI Galway President's Award for Research Excellence (awarded to Prof. Steven Ellis); the Moore Institute, NUI Galway; the Discipline of History, NUI Galway and the Society for Renaissance Studies.

As in previous years the majority of papers were recorded for podcasting by https://soundcloud.com/real-smart-media in association with www.historyhub.ie. There are now more than 140 podcasts from previous Tudor and Stuart Ireland conferences freely available. To access this archive go to www.historyhub.ie/podcasts or visit tudorstuartireland.com