Ireland Under the Tudors, with a Succinct Account of the Earlier History. Vol. 3 (of 3)

Volume three of Bagwell's monumental history reaches the bloody crescendo of England's Tudor conquest. Here the patient tensions of earlier decades explode into open warfare: James Fitzmaurice raises the standard of rebellion in 1579 with papal blessing and foreign promises, the Desmond Earls wage their desperate war in Munster, and Spanish galleons finally appear off Irish shores. But it is Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who commands the reader's attention, a brilliant strategist who nearly broke English power before final defeat at Kinsale and the exhausted surrender of 1603. Bagwell writes with Victorian precision but without Victorian detachment, capturing the tragedies of Fitzgerald and O'Neill, the double-dealings of English governors, and the last gasps of a Gaelic world that would not soon return. This is not mere chronicle but elegy, marking the end of an Ireland that had resisted Norman, Plantagenet, and now Tudor alike.