Desmond Rebellions in the context of "Scorched earth"

The Kingdom of Ireland (Early Modern Irish: Ríoghacht Éireann; Modern Irish: Ríocht na hÉireann, pronounced [ənˠ ˌɾˠiːxt̪ˠ ˈeːɾʲən̪ˠ]) was a dependency of England from 1542 to 1707, and subsequently Great Britain from 1707 to 1800. It was ruled by the monarchs of England and then of Great Britain in personal union, and was administered from Dublin Castle by a viceroy appointed by the English king: the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. By the late 17th century, the state was dominated by the Protestant Anglo-Irish minority, known as the Protestant Ascendancy. The Protestant Church of Ireland was the state church. The Parliament of Ireland was almost exclusively Anglo-Irish. From 1661, the administration controlled an Irish army. Although formally a kingdom in personal union on equal footing with England and later Great Britain, for most of its history it was de facto a dependency with a viceroy sent as an envoy from London. This status was enshrined in the Declaratory Act 1719, also known as the Irish Parliament Act 1719.

The territory of the kingdom comprised that of the former Lordship of Ireland, founded in 1177 by King Henry II of England and the English Pope Adrian IV, after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. By the 16th century, the Pale, the area of effective English rule, had shrunk greatly; most of Ireland was held by Gaelic nobles as minor principalities notionally subject to London but independent in practice. By the terms of the Crown of Ireland Act 1542, Henry VIII of England became "King of Ireland", theoretically elevating Ireland to coequal status with England as a kingdom in personal union. There followed an expansion of English control during the Tudor conquest. This sparked the Desmond Rebellions and the Nine Years' War. The conquest of the island was completed early in the 17th century. It involved the confiscation of land from the native Irish Catholics and its colonisation by Protestant settlers from Britain. Most Catholic countries at the time did not recognise Protestant monarchs as legitimate kings of Ireland (or indeed of England), instead supporting the Jacobite government-in-exile from 1688 onwards.

Ireland was conquered by the Tudor monarchs of England in the 16th century. The Anglo-Normans had conquered swathes of Ireland in the late 12th century, bringing it under English rule. In the 14th century, the effective area of English rule shrank markedly, and from then most of Ireland was held by native Gaelic chiefdoms. Following a failed rebellion by the Earl of Kildare in the 1530s, the English Crown set about restoring its authority. Henry VIII of England was made "King of Ireland" by the Crown of Ireland Act 1542. The conquest involved assimilating the Gaelic nobility by way of "surrender and regrant"; the confiscation and colonisation ('plantation') of lands with settlers from Britain; imposing English law and language; banning Catholicism, dissolving the monasteries, and making Anglican Protestantism the state religion.

The Tudor policies in Ireland sparked the Desmond Rebellions (1569–1573, 1579–1583) and the Nine Years' War (1594–1603). Despite Spain sending an armada to support the Irish Catholics during the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604), by 1603 the entire country was under English rule. The Flight of the Earls in 1607 largely completed the destruction of the Gaelic aristocracy and left the way open for the Plantation of Ulster, which established a large British Protestant population in the north. Several people who helped establish the plantations of Ireland also played a part later in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the West Country Men.

The Second Desmond Rebellion (1579–1583) was the more widespread and bloody of the two Desmond Rebellions in Ireland launched by the FitzGerald Dynasty of Desmond in Munster against English rule. The second rebellion began in July 1579 when James FitzMaurice FitzGerald landed in Ireland with a force of Papal troops, triggering an insurrection across the south of Ireland on the part of the Desmond dynasty, their allies, and others who were dissatisfied for various reasons with English government of the country. The rebellion ended with the 1583 death of Gerald FitzGerald, 14th Earl of Desmond, and the defeat of the rebels.

The rebellion was in equal part a protest by feudal lords against the intrusion of central government into their domains; an Irish clan reaction to English policies that were destroying traditional Gaelic culture; and a religious conflict, in which the rebellion's leaders considered themselves defending Catholicism against religious persecution by a Protestant queen who had been pronounced a tyrant and a heretic in 1570 by Pope Pius V's bull Regnans in Excelsis.

Earl of Desmond (Irish: Iarla Dheasumhan meaning Earl of South Munster) is a title of nobility created by the English monarch in the peerage of Ireland. The title has been created four times. It was first awarded in 1329 to Maurice FitzGerald, 4th Baron Desmond, a Hiberno-Norman lord in Southwest Ireland, and it was held by his descendants until 1583 when they rose against the English crown in the Desmond Rebellions. Following two short-lived recreations of the title in the early 1600s, the title has been held since 1628 by the Feilding family of Warwickshire, England. The current holder is Alexander Feilding, 12th Earl of Denbigh and 11th Earl of Desmond (4th creation). The Earldom historically comprised what is now the entirety of County Limerick with large swathes of County Cork, County Kerry and County Waterford also being included. It bordered the Kingdom of Desmond, Kingdom of Thomond and the Earldom of Ormond