Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland: Clerical Resistance and Political Conflict in the Diocese of Dublin, 1534–1590

In Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland, James Murray engages with the current debate over the failure of the English to implement and enforce Reformation in Ireland.He demonstrates that the revival and revitalization of pre-Reformation Catholicism was crucial to the old religion's survival there; ultimately, it proved the reason behind the English Reformation's failure to take root in the English Pale.One of the strengths of this book is the substantial overview of the historiography.Murray argues that the Bradshaw-Canny debate-prompted by the use of confessional models to interpret the religious conservatism of clergy within the English Pale-has been the impetus behind most of the academic inquiries into this subject over the past 30 years.But while a number of scholars have contributed greatly to our understanding of resistance to reform in Ireland under the Tudors, scholarship in this area has yet to produce any "definitive answers" (12).With that in mind, Murray employs an approach to the subject matter that scholars of the English Reformation have found fruitful: uncovering the processes of Reformation at the local level.Using the archdiocese of Dublin as the site of negotiation, Murray examines the struggle for power between the Archbishops Browne, Curwen, and Loftus, their "indigenous clerical elite", (19) and the Tudor viceroys sent to implement royal policy.But while this book succeeds in teasing out the high politics of Reformation in Dublin and, to some extent, the Pale, Murray acknowledges that the paucity of sources makes it impossible to identify any response on the ground to the initiatives of the reformed clergy or representatives of the Crown.Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland takes as its focus the nature of the response of the English Irish community to the Reformation.At the heart of the English cathedral clergy's resistance to reform was the use of canon law to bolster their power.Using papal bulls like laudabiliter as their guide, the English in Ireland continued to see themselves as the protectors of Irish Christianity, saving the Irish church from the barbarism of the Gael.Murray's work makes clear that what guided the seemingly conservative English clergy in Ireland was not a united mission with the Gaelic Irish to fend off the Protestant threat, but

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