Most of them were stubbornly Roman Catholic in their religious beliefs and as a result after the Protestant Reformation their loyalty to the Crown was often suspect, a suspicion reinforced by their role in the Rebellion of Silken Thomas, in 1534-6.
The foreword contains evidence that Burnell wrote other plays which have not survived: he claims that a previous work failed due to "spite".
[7] A more elaborate parallel suggests that Reyner represents King Charles I of England and that the plot reflects the political turbulence which led to the English Civil War.
Burnell refers to the "good applause" his play received, and quotes an English writer who called him "the true heir of Ben Jonson", an opinion which few critics either then or later have shared.
[1] In more recent times, the biographer of his patron the Earl of Strafford gave her frank view that while Landgartha was an important milestone in the development of the Irish theatre, it has no merits whatsoever as a play.
[8] That this view was widely shared in Burnell's own time is suggested by his bitter reference to "the other babblers" (i.e. critics) who had apparently ridiculed his play, and whom he in turn regarded with contempt.
[1] Given his status as a leading Catholic landowner of the Pale, with a long family tradition of questioning Crown policy, it was natural that Burnell should be a prominent member of the Irish Confederacy.
He was living at another family estate at Castlerickard in County Meath in 1642, and was still alive in 1655 when he pleaded ill-health as a ground for delaying his transportation.
Although her surviving body of work consists only of a few Latin verses, including Patri suo Charissimo operis Encomium, Eleanor is unique in being, so far as we know, the only female Anglo-Irish poet of her time.