Soldiering in Ireland

Abstract

Two questions dominated these last years of the reign: the war in Ireland, which flared up into something approaching a national resistance movement, under the politic leadership of the great O’Neill; and the question of the succession upon the Queen’s death. These highly inflammable issues came to be interconnected, particularly through the inflammable personality of Essex, who meant to dominate both and make himself the decisive person in the English state at the take-over by King James of Scotland.