The long tradition of Irish historiography which takes the rebellion of the Fitzgeralds of Kildare in 1534 as marking the transition between the medieval and the modern phase of Irish political history is surely correct. The continuous succession of English heads of the Irish executive, broken only by the appointment of Ormond – an exceptional man in execeptional circumstances – in the reigns of Charles I and his son, begins with the ousting of the earl of Kildare from office in the prelude to the rebellion. Similarly, the continued presence of an English army in Ireland dates from the arrival of the force under Lord Deputy Skeffington in the summer of 1534 to deal with the rebellion. Both phenomena, the succession of English heads of the executive and the continued presence of the army, testify to a new involvement on the part of government in England with Irish affairs, an involvement which profoundly influenced the course of Irish history throughout the modern period.

Thus far the traditional historiography will hardly be challenged. What must be discussed are the circumstances which precipitated this new involvement and its precise significance in the context of Tudor policy towards Ireland. According to the tradition, 1534 saw the culmination of a number of related historical developments in the onset of the Tudor conquest. One was the emergence of the renaissance-style Tudor monarchy which sooner or later had to come to grips with the home rule – as Curtis termed it – of the Anglo-Irish and Gaelic magnates. The showdown between Henry VIII and the Fitzgeralds marks the point at which the irresistible force finally launched itself against the immovable object.