Magnificence and massacre: Essex and the Enterprise of Ulster, 1573-76

The first Earl of Essex's 'Enterprise' proved unsuccessful. Hiram Morgan's chapter covers the full chronology of this colonial fiasco, from the planning stages to its ignominious failure in practice. Court machinations were always central to Essex's plan: it was hatched by him as a means to aggrandise himself in the eyes of his queen and above his peers, and the revival of the medieval earldom of Ulster was a critical component of that court competition. But such 'paper-based' ventures conceived as much to affect the relative status of English elites as to effect 'civility' in the western realm proved terminal to some of the figures involved and toxic to any emergent affinities binding Irish lords to the central state.