To judge a language in a time of conquest was an act of criticism with practical implications. Newcomers' impressions of Irish shaped their language policies. With cultural difference mapping political difference so precisely, a language regarded as housing dissent and querulous diversity could not escape the attentions of those advancing Tudor centralisation and uniformity. Irish was popish; it was the agent of an invasive otherness which had derailed the cultural integrity of the original colony; it hung as a threat over the identity of the new settlers. With the boundaries between medium and message blurred, silencing dissent shaded into silencing Irish. In the affairs of language, however, ‘silence’ is a purely notional state: in reality, not to speak Irish meant to speak English.

For English language policy was far from being purely defensive. Just as the newcomers' desire to gag the carping vernacular was grounded in negative evaluations of Irish, so their inclination to impose their own language rested on a chauvinistic estimation of English. This double movement, which combined an indolent deprecation of Irish with a burgeoning confidence in English, brings us close to the nub of Elizabethan cultural nationalism and the linguistic imperialism which flowed from it.