In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Howth’s compilation was driven by competing perceptions of failed conquest. This issue had been central to Tudor administrators’ and analysts’ policies for the transformation of English governance in Ireland since its first clear articulation in Patrick Finglas’s ‘Breviate’ in the reign of Henry VIII. The question resurfaced with particular intensity early in the Elizabethan era during Sidney’s first term as lord deputy when the 1569 Act for the Attainder of Shane O’Neill used a portrait of failed conquest both to laud Sidney for having at last achieved this centuries-old objective and as the premise on which to predicate his proposals for reform. This dual purpose had dual implications for the Old English: it implied their historical failure as colonial administrators and thus could be used as grounds on which to justify their displacement . Howth’s collection countered such presentations of failed conquest and its implications, positing instead an alternative presentation of events in which successful conquest had been impeded historically not by an established colonial community, but by succeeding waves of newly arriving landholders, administrators, military officers and soldiers who, he argued, misrepresented the history and state of conquest in the service of advancing policies to their own benefit. Howth’s extended portrait of conquest and its failures simultaneously defended a threatened Old English community and challenged the efficacy of Sidney’s reforms. Attention to the structure by which Howth’s manuscript was compiled is an essential prerequisite to assessing its contents. Attempting to read the entries in the order in which they are now bound is futile; without dating or context it becomes even more difficult . The tendency is to look first at what seems to be the work’s central focus, a reconstruction of the history of conquest, as suggested by that history’s length and coherency, for clues as to the compilation’s rationale and meaning. This is misleading, for it is assessment of the miscellaneous collection within the context of dating permitted by 4. Colonial Conflict and Positioning: Assessing The Book of Howth 87 structural analysis that proves to be the most beneficial first step in assessing the entire collection. With the exception of several brief entries, all of the miscellaneous contents were collected during the first phase of compilation, the majority of them during its foundational stage. They appear initially to be one of the manuscript’s most perplexing elements, with little apparent cohesion in subject matter, which ranges from lists of giants, Irish captains, prophecies and rebellions to passages on the Knights Templar, Arthurian lore and women. Along with their seemingly random nature, the placement of these entries on the manuscript’s latter folios further encourages their dismissal. Though there is no concrete evidence from which to deduce whether the history and miscellaneous collection were initiated simultaneously or whether one was conceived before the other, certainly both were begun by Howth’s first scribe and both respond to the same stimuli. When the miscellaneous contents are assessed first and used as a framework within which to assess Howth’s history, as opposed to use of the history as a framework within which to interpret the miscellaneous contents, we find the dating of phase one not only confirmed but refined by consideration of the miscellaneous entries’ subject matter. From this subject matter we can see that as Howth began to compile the miscellaneous entries he was not collecting randomly: he collected items specifically in response to the early parliamentary sessions of January–March 1569. These parliamentary sessions give clarity and cohesion to Howth’s miscellaneous contents and provide the rationale for his particular presentation of the history of conquest. Phase One: 1569–72 The era in which the early parliamentary sessions of 1569 took place was a turbulent one for the Old English and was described by Canny as ‘traumatic’ for them.1 A number of events induced considerable anxiety among members of the Old English community regarding the security of their position and resulted in a variety of responses, some in the form of parliamentary opposition and some in the form of rebellion. The anxieties of this period induced a transformation in Howth’s position that is revealed in his compilation. The first of the threats of this period came in the form of challenges to Old English landholdings when Sidney blatantly intervened to secure Peter Carew’s claim to Butler holdings in Munster and to land in Meath held by Sir Christopher Cheevers, Howth’s cousin and a...

Share