In 1534 .Thomas Fitzgerald, son of the viceroy of Henry VIII., revolted, but nest meeting with adequate support from his Anglo-Irish connections, he was, after a short time, suppressed and executed. henry'received•the title of "king onreland" in 1541; by an act passed by the Anglo-Irish parliament in Dublin; and.about the same period, some of the native princes were induced to acknowledge him as their sovereign, and to accept peerages. The doctrines of the reformation met little favor either with the descendants of the old English settlers or with the native Irish. About the middle of the 16th c. Shane O'Neill, a prince of the most powerful ancient family of Ulster, attempted to suppress his rivals, and to assume the kingship of that province, in which he was eventually unsuccessful; but after his death in 1567 his successor received the title of earl of Tyrone from Elizabeth. The attempts of the English government in Ireland to introduce the reformed faith and English institutions stirred up great dissen sions in Ireland. Among the first to revolt was the earl of Desmond, after whose death, in 1583, his vast estates in Munster were parceled out to English settlers. Soon after, the chief clans of Ulster took up arms; and in opposing them the forces of Elizabeth, commanded by officers of high military reputation, encountered many reverses, the most serious of which was that in 1598 at the battle of the Yellow Ford, near Armagh, where the English army was routed and its general slain. Philip III. of Spain, at the solicitation of the Irish chiefs, dispatched a body of troops to their assistance in 1601, which, landing in the extreme south, instead of in the north, as had been expected, were unable to effect anything, and were constrained to surrender.
Although Elizabeth was supported by numbers of native Irish, the northern chiefs, O'Neill and O'Donnell, held out till the queen's government came to terms with them in 1603, recognizing them as earls of Tyrone and Tirconnell. In 1608 these noblemen, having apprehensions for their personal safety, quitted Ireland unexpectedly, ard retired to the continent. Their withdrawal enabled James I. to carry out that project of parceling out the n. of Ireland to Scottish and English settlers which is usually known as the "plantation of The Irish took advantage of the contentious in England to rise in insurrection (1641) and massacre the Protestants. It is believed that nearly 40,000 fell victims to their fury. The. country continued in a state of anarchy till 1649, when Cromwell overran it. At the revolution the native Irish generally took the part of James II., the English and Scotch "colonists" of William and Mary, and the war was kept up for four years (1688-92). From this time till 1778 history records little beyond the passing of penal statutes against the Roman Catholics. In 1778 par liament relaxed the stringent pressure of these acts; but the widely spread disaffection which they caused gave birth to numerous societies, resulting in the rebellion of 1798, which was not suppressed till 1800. On Jan. 1 of the following year the legislative union of Great Britain with Ireland was consummated, and from this period the his tory of the country merges in that of Great Britain.