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Irish priests educated in England

Ricardolindo

Well-known member
Location
Portugal
What if at some point in the 16th or 17th century, England forced Irish priests to be educated in England in an attempt to turn it Anglican? Would this have been successful? Denmark did this to Norway and it was successful.
 
What if at some point in the 16th or 17th century, England forced Irish priests to be educated in England in an attempt to turn it Anglican? Would this have been successful? Denmark did this to Norway and it was successful.
It would be the exact opposite of their policy OTL.


They paid for Irish priests to be well educated and comfortable because they felt that the Gaelic speaking and Catholic masses were getting misled into rebellions and resistence by the rural clergy who were similar in background and status, so they tried to reinforce the Church Hierarchy as a way of keeping a structure in place that had a vested interest in stability and lawful behavior.


Active efforts at conversion would at very least in the short term result in destabilization and conflict. Ireland was already a divided and violent place and there was a trend of conversions of convenience to gain entrance into the Protestant land holding class but that runs into the issue that they didn't want to take on too many psedo or ex Catholics, they wanted an underclass.



Could active conversion have turned Ireland protestant? Maybe. It happened plenty of other places, but it also caused plenty of bloodshed and civil war other places and the authorities generally already saw Ireland as a riotous and unstable place, pouring fuel on the fire would go exactly against their strategic priority of not having to deal with a revolt there when dealing with affairs on the continent.
 
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