The conquest involved assimilating the Gaelic nobility by way of "surrender and regrant"; the confiscation and colonisation ('plantation') of lands with settlers from Britain; imposing English law and language; banning Catholicism, dissolving the monasteries and making Anglican Protestantism the state religion.

Several people who helped establish the plantations of Ireland also played a part later in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the West Country Men.

[2] The conquest technically extended into the Stuart period, as the Treaty of Mellifont, which ended the Nine Years' War, was signed mere days after the death of Elizabeth I.

A large area on the east coast, extending from the Wicklow Mountains in the south to Dundalk in the north (covering parts of modern counties of Dublin, Louth, Meath, Westmeath, Kildare, Offaly, and Laois), became known as the Pale.

As a result, in the 14th and 15th centuries, in the wake of Irish rebellion, Scottish invasion, the Black Death, and a lack of interest on the part of the London government, the territories controlled by those lords achieved a high degree of independence.

Beyond those territories large areas of land previously held by authority of the English crown were taken by the resurgent Gaelic Irish, particularly in the north and midlands.

The King's Lord Deputy of Ireland was chief of the administration, based in Dublin Castle, but maintained no formal court and had a limited privy purse.

Thomas, Earl of Kildare, a Catholic, offered control of Ireland to both the pope and Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire.

Henry put down the rebellion by executing the leader ("Silken Thomas" FitzGerald), along with several of his uncles, and imprisoned Gearóid Óg, the head of the family.

What was needed was a cost-effective new policy that protected the Pale and guaranteed the safety of England's vulnerable west flank from foreign invasion.

It was, however, the Tudors' increasing encroachment upon the Irish local autonomy by the development of a centralised state that was to bring the English system into direct conflict with the Gaelic one.

Henry's religious Reformation – although not as thorough as in England – caused disquiet; his lord deputy, Anthony St Leger, was largely able to buy off opposition by granting lands confiscated from the monasteries to Irish nobles.

In the 1560s, English attempts to interfere in a succession dispute within the O'Neill sept, or clan, sparked a long war between Thomas Radcliffe (Lord Deputy of Sussex) and Seán Mac Cuinn Ó Néill.

These included the mercenary class or gallowglass, and Irish poets or file – both of whom faced having their source of income and status abolished in an English-ruled Ireland.

The first such initiative used martial government, whereby violent areas such as the Wicklow Mountains were garrisoned by small numbers of English troops under commanders called seneschalls.

One was composition, where private armed forces were abolished, and provinces were occupied by English troops under the command of governors, titled lords president.

In return, the pre-eminent septs and lords were exempted from taxation and had their entitlements to rents from subordinate families and their tenants put on a statutory basis.

The imposition of this settlement was marked by bitter violence, particularly in Connacht, where the MacWilliam Burkes fought a local war against the English Provincial President, Sir Richard Bingham, and his subordinate, Nicholas Malby.

The second long-term solution was Plantations, in which areas of the country were to be settled with people from England, who would bring in English language and culture while remaining loyal to the crown.

In the 1590s, after the Desmond Rebellions, parts of Munster were populated with English in the plantation of that province, but the project was half-hearted and ran into legal difficulties when Irish landowners chose to sue; the largest grant of lands was made to Sir Walter Raleigh, but he never really made a success of it and sold out to Sir Richard Boyle, who later became Earl of Cork and the wealthiest subject of the early Stuart monarchs.

In what was later named the Nine Years' War, O'Neill focused his action in Ulster and along its borders, until Spanish promises of aid in 1596 led him to spread the conflict to the rest of Ireland.

As plantation policy expanded to outlying districts including Sligo, Fermanagh and Monaghan, the English occupation of Ireland grew increasingly militaristic.

Rebels such as James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald and Aodh Mór Ó Néill sought and received help from Catholic powers in Europe, justifying their actions on religious grounds.

The 1601 debasement of the Irish currency led to multiple lawsuits, most notably Gilbert v. Brett, commonly known as the Case of Mixt Monies, which was referred to the Privy Council of England in 1604.