Calvinism, Reform and the Absolutist State in Elizabethan Ireland

Despite the best efforts of the English government, Elizabethan Ireland remained resolutely Catholic. Hutchinson examines this 'failure' of the Protestant Reformation. He argues that the emerging political concept of the absolutist state forms a crucial link between English policy in Ireland and the aims of the Calvinist reformers. In doing so, Hutchinson places Ireland within the wider context of English political and religious reform and European intellectual history.