The Capture and Killing of Politicized Women in the Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland

• In Event: Violent Lives in Early Modern Britain and Ireland

Abstract

Women were not exempt from the intensifying levels of violence that accompanied the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland. Innumerable unnamed women were killed in wide-scale attacks, for instance. However, many named women were also targeted, usually the sisters and wives of men identified as ‘rebels’. This paper will consider a selection of episodes in which female relatives were singled out for imprisonment and interrogation, and in some cases threatened with execution, as well as the authorities’ concern in some cases to identify female relatives killed during attacks. While in some cases these women were accused of complicity, other cases where the motive is less clearly specified provide the opportunity to consider more broadly the place of gender in the politics and violence of Elizabethan conquest.

Author

• Valerie McGowan-Doyle, Lorain County Community College