In 1541 King Henry VIII became the first English monarch to declare himself king of Ireland, and began a protracted campaign to reclaim Ireland's allegiance to the crown. Staunchly Catholic, the disenfranchised Irish lords enlisted the support of both Papal and Spanish states. A series of battles ensued over the next 60 years, culminating in the battle of Kinsale in 1601 under Queen Elizabeth, which crushed the bulk of the Irish resistance. Relations between the Irish and the occupying English were tense, to say the least, with the Irish viewing the English as faithless, cruel oppressors looking to expand their personal holdings with Irish land, while the English saw the Irish as savages who could be easily used by Spain or the Catholic church against the English. Governors of Ireland at the time included: Lord Sussex, Sir Henry Sidney, Sir William FitzWilliam, and Lord Grey. Notable proponents of Irish independence and sympathizers for the rebel cause were Shane O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Desmond.

Perhaps the most famous of the English occupying force in Ireland was Sir Edmund Spencer, hailed the English Virgil by his contemporaries. Spencer was appointed Sheriff of County Cork in 1598, and was the author of "The Faerie Queen", an epic which personified the various virtues and vices held dear by the Protestant Spencer, as well lauded the virtues of Queen Elizabeth, who is represented as Glorianna the Faerie Queen in his narrative, the embodiment of all the other virtues in the saga.

Ireland was never a wealthy country. Much of the country's land is either rocky or pocked with peat bogs, unsuited to agriculture. Its depiction as a "savage" country by the English, however, was largely undeserved, as Ireland was a famed as a center of education in prior centuries, with many schools both monastic and secular that educated not only Irish, but French, Spanish and Portuguese students as well. Major cities in Ireland included Dublin, which was the seat of the English government on the island, Cork, Munster, which was one of the less hostile places in Ireland at the time and was home to many Scottish protestant settlers, and Galloway.

Some good Irish names include:

Girls - Aileen, Aine, Alma, Brenna, Bridget, Clare, Deirdre, Eileen, Fiona, Gweneth, Maeve, Maureen, Moira, Nora, Noreen, Oona, Shannon, Sorcha, Yseult

Boys - Bran, Brendan, Brian, Colin, Daniel, Darby, Dermot, Devin, Devlin, Donald, Fergus, Fionn, Flynn, Gaelin, Kerry, Michael, Nyle, Owain, Seamus

Additional Information:

Website: The Grace O'Malley - Granuaile O'Malley Page
Website: The True Story of What the Irish Wore
Website: Celtic Dress of the 16th Century
Book: Sixteenth-Century Ireland : The Incomplete Conquest, Colm Lennon