Lesson video

Hello, hi, welcome.

Ms. Apps here, ready to teach you another lesson of history, and I'm actually going to be able to see for once, because today I have on my glasses.

So what will we be looking at today? Well, over the previous lessons, we've sailed the seven seas to the Caribbean with Sir Francis Drake and the sea dogs, and we've travelled towards the Islamic world of the Ottoman empire, as well as Morocco in North Africa.

In today's lesson, we will be heading a little bit closer to home by travelling to Ireland and investigating Elizabethan England's connections with Ireland.

So if you aren't already ready, grab a pen, grab some paper and let's get started.

Okay, well done, you've grabbed your pen, you've grabbed your paper, now let's get started.

Over the previous lessons, we have been investigating the inquiry question.

Why was the world opening up to Elizabeth I and her people? In today's lesson, we will be a little bit closer to home looking at Elizabeth I's connections with Ireland.

So let's get our title down now.

Why did Elizabeth I send so many soldiers to Ireland? If you need to put a pause on the video to get that done, do that now, and I will meet you at our first task.

Well done for getting your title down.

This is now officially a Miss Apps tradition, starting our lessons with an image.

This is again, another image that I really, really love because there is a deep meaning hidden within what seems like quite a kooky and weird portrait.

So what I would like you to do is have a look at this image, and I would like you to spend one minute writing down what objects you can see, how you could describe the way this figure was dressed, and anything you might guess about this person.

Put a pause on the video and have a go at that now.

Okay, so how did we do? I don't know about you, but the first time I ever saw this image, the first thing that my eyes were drawn towards was those pasty, pasty legs.

So in the Elizabethan era, it was very, very, very fashionable to be as pale as possible to the point where you might even ask a portrait artist to paint fake blue veins on your skin to make yourself look so pale that you were almost translucent.

So first thing that you may have had your eyes drawn upon was those legs.

You may then also have raised your eyes up and noticed the symbols and items of a soldier, so we can see a helmet, we can see the pommel of a sword, which he has his hand resting over, and we can also see an arquebus, so a type of pistol, an early gun.

In the figure's hand, we can also see a type of pike or a long pole you might've thought.

So you probably looked at this and you thought perhaps this is some sort of soldier or a fighting man, and you can see his shield on his back as well.

You also then probably looked at this figure and thought what an unusual way to dress.

Is he undressed? Is he partially dressed? He's in the equivalent of Elizabethan underwear, he's only wearing an undershirt.

Now, this is a really unusual portrait because this is an English person being painted in this style.

And when we look at other English soldiers in this period, we can see that they would dress in more traditional Elizabethan clothing, so I've put for you an image of Sir Phillip Sidney in the usual doublet that you would expect an Elizabethan person to be wearing, so he's wearing the doublet, the jacket, the white thing that you can see.

He's also got his Elizabethan ruff on, and he's got some armoured protection of his neck for battle.

On the other hand, our other English figure is barely armoured at all, and he's wearing this shirt.

Now I'll let you know that this is an English version of traditional Irish dress, and it's an English version of the traditional Irish dress of the Kerne, K-E-R-N-E.

A Kerne was a traditional Irish foot soldier.

And the Elizabethans were obsessed with the fact that Irish soldiers went bare legged and barefooted.

They couldn't believe it.

I think it makes Irish people seem really tough and hardy, so I think it's quite cool.

However, he's not wearing any run of the mill dress, this figure, he is actually wearing a very, very expensive shirt, despite the fact that he's not wearing many clothes, and it's covered in blackwork, which is a type of embroidery done with black thread that would take the tailors and the women who did it absolutely hours, so he's wearing a very, very expensive shirt.

He's also got lace collars and lace cuffs as well, which show that this figure is actually a man of wealth.

This isn't an ordinary soldier, this is a wealthy man, almost playing dress up as an Irish soldier.

And we can tell that he's dressed up as an Irish soldier, one, because of the dress that he's wearing, but two, because when we look at the background, it is an imagined Irish background, so we can see a lock, a lake, we can see the mountains and we can see this wooded area.

This is an imagined perspective on Ireland.

And this figure is a man called Sir Thomas Lee, and Sir Thomas Lee was an English soldier who was sent to Ireland on behalf of Elizabeth I, and he had this portrait painted after he'd returned to England as a way of showing loyalty to Elizabeth in fighting in Ireland.

If this image was created today, we might even call it cultural appropriation, because we have an English person playing dress up as a figure from traditional Irish culture.

However, in the Elizabethan period, this was seen as perfectly acceptable, and in fact, images of Ireland and images highlighting the differences between Irish cultures and ways of life and English culture and ways of life were massively popular.

I've taught you quite a bit already, so let's pause the lesson for a second.

I want you to finish my sentences.

This image is of Thomas Lee.

He was a, fill in the gap, and he is dressed as a.

Can you complete my sentence? So what would I have written if I was you? Remember, you don't always have to write exactly the same words that I have, but as long as you've gotten the general gist, please feel free to give yourself a tick.

So what should you have said? I would've said this image is of Thomas Lee, he was an English soldier in Ireland, he is dressed as a Kerne or an Irish soldier.

Give yourself a tick or a cross, edit it if you need to.

Again, you can pause the video now, if you want to, to correct yourself, Right, well done.

So let's now get down to the nitty gritty of England's relationship with Ireland.

The relationship between England and Ireland actually went back to the mediaeval period, so it goes back to the 1200s.

The island of Ireland, the people on the island of Ireland spoke Gaelic, the Gaelic language, and they had their own special Irish laws and ways of running the country and punishments, et cetera.

After the Norman conquest of England, the Normans took over England, coming from Normandy.

They also took areas of Ireland.

So Norman settlers by the 1300s by 1300 had taken land in Ireland.

And you can see in my map, this Norman land, which is in that brownish yellowish colour.

These Norman settlers in these areas came to hold positions of power, and by the Tudor period, these people were known as the old English.

So they were the old English settlers into Ireland who had taken power.

The Tudor family to control Ireland relied upon Old English families, so Old English descendants of those Norman settlers.

And two of the main Old English families that the English crown, the English monarchs relied upon were the Fitzgerald family and the Butler family.

Lots of wealthy English people were actually married off into these two families to foster connections between England and Ireland.

By the time of the Tudor period, so by around 1500, the English held, on this map, these regions that you can see in white.

And the main area of their control where English was spoken, where English laws governed, and where English towns were, was known as the Pale and the Pale was an area around the city of Dublin.

The English relied upon a lord deputy to control Ireland.

So the English king would always create a lord deputy who would try to control Ireland for him.

And the lord deputy relied upon the old English families to control the white areas of Ireland, the English areas of Ireland.

However, by the Tudor period, there was a problem, in that lots of the old English families were actually starting to become Gaelicised, so they were starting to speak Gaelic and sort of assimilate, bleed into the traditional Irish culture of Ireland.

So by the reign of Henry VIII we have an issue.

We have Henry VIII seeing himself as being in control of Ireland, but not really in reality having much control.

So his solution was he decided he would announce himself King of all Ireland.

And so in 1542, he says "Right, I'm the King of Ireland.

I've taken all the land of Ireland." He seizes it, and what he decides to do is give back the land to the Irish people and to the Old English families if they agree to live by English rule and pay taxes to the English king.

Now you can see on my map that we have the white Old English areas that are controlled by earls, such as the Earl of Desmond, we've got the Pale and the Earl of Ormond, we've got Wexford, et cetera.

You can also see in the different style of texts, the different style of writing, the Gaelic regions of Ireland.

These were regions of Ireland that the English did not have control over and were run by the traditional Gaelic Irish families.

And so across the Tudor period, we are going to see increasingly the Tudor monarchs try to seize the Gaelic Irish families power.

Let's put a pause on it there though, because I am flooding your minds with knowledge, and let's have a go at some multiple choice questions.

So question number one, which royal family took land in Ireland? Was it option one, the Tudors? Option two, the Normans? Option three, the Stuarts? And option four, the Plantagenets? Write down which option you believe it was.

Did you guess correctly? Or did you remember correctly, actually? It was option two, the Normans, the Normans took control in Ireland.

Question number two, the main area the English controlled in Tudor times was called what? Was it option one, the Pale? Option two, the Fale? Option three, the Phale? Or option four, the Hale? Write down your answer now.

It was option one, the Pale.

The Pale was the area around Dublin in which English was spoken and the English held power.

Number three, who pronounced themselves King of all Ireland in a very arrogant move in the 1540s? Was it option one Henry VI? Option two, Henry VII? Option three, Henry VIII? Or option four, Henry V? Write down your answer now.

Did you get it correct? It was option three, Henry VIII.

Well done for having a go at those answers, give yourself a tick if you got them correct.

If you didn't, don't worry, we'll come back to these ideas again.

Let's talk now though about the Elizabethan attitudes to Ireland, because of course we are looking at the Elizabethan era and we're looking at Elizabeth's connections to the wider world.

So the Elizabethans had a quite condescending, a quite negative attitude towards Ireland.

In 1516, a man called Sir Thomas Moore had written a very, very famous book called "Utopia".

And in the book "Utopia", he argued that it was the duty of more civilised, more well-mannered people to go out into the world and colonise, take over areas that they didn't believe the culture was good enough of.

So the Elizabethans looked at Ireland and they looked at the differences between Elizabethan Ireland and Elizabethan England, and they looked to the island and they felt like they wanted to put their civilization upon it.

And so Elizabeth I understands that the most, for the most part, Ireland is Catholic.

And so in 1560, she pronounces herself Supreme Governor of the Church of Ireland, and she begins to try and force the Irish people to accept Protestantism.

At the same time, she feels like the Irish, particularly in the North and West cannot be trusted and cannot be controlled.

The Elizabethans talk about these areas of Ireland as being controlled and held by the wild Irish, people who spoke Gaelic and people who had a very different culture to Elizabethan England.

And you can see the differences in culture in this image from the 1580s.

This image that you can see on your screen is from a book called "The Image of Ireland" which was created by an English author.

And in this image, you can see an Irish Gaelic chieftain, so an Irish Gaelic leader of the Mac Sweyne clan at dinner.

And this Elizabethan author has created this image to make the Irish seem as different as possible to Elizabethan England.

So you can see their dress is very different, you can see the figure wearing that short cloak as we saw Thomas Lee wearing, we've got a harpist, we've got people going to the toilet near the dinner table, we've got a fire near the dining table, we've got a dog eating a bone.

We've got an animal being killed right behind the leader of the Mac Sweyne family.

This is an imagined image, this isn't how Irish people actually lived, but this is the Elizabethans trying to make the Irish Gaelic chieftains, the Irish Gaelic lords look as uncivilised as possible to justify their own reasons for controlling and taking land in Ireland.

And so, from the reign of Elizabeth onwards, the Elizabethans are increasingly trying to take land in Ireland, and they're increasingly trying to undermine the power of the traditional Gaelic chiefs.

And in this image that we can see here from the same book, we can see a lord deputy of Ireland, so an English leader in Ireland, leaving Dublin, leaving the Pale to go off and try and conquer Gaelic leaders and Gaelic land.

As a result of this, Elizabeth increasingly faced rebellion.

And one of the most famous of these rebellions was the Nine Years War, which occurred in the 1590s and was led by a man called Hugh O'Neill, who was the Earl of Tyrone in Northern Ireland.

And today I'm going to get you to learn a little bit more about him.

But let's have a quick pause again and recap what we've just covered.

So why was there tension in Ireland? Why did Elizabeth need to send soldiers there? Well firstly, the Tudor monarchs believed that they should rule Ireland.

As a consequence of this, they tried to force English law, culture and Protestant religion on Ireland.

As a consequence of this, the power of Irish Gaelic leaders, Irish Gaelic Catholic leaders was challenged.

And this led to rebellions in Ireland.

Let's put a pause on the video here, and let's try now to fill in that diagram from what I have just told you.

Put a pause on the video and have a go now.

Okay, so what should you have written in those gaps? Well, firstly, you should have written Tudor monarchs believe that they should rule Ireland.

They tried to force English law, culture and Protestant religion on Ireland, the power of Irish leaders was challenged, and as a consequence of this, there was rebellion.

Give yourself a tick, give yourself a cross and improve that if you need to, but I'm fairly sure that you've done brilliantly well.

Okay, we're now going to have a go at moving this over to you.

So I would now like you to investigate the story of the Elizabethan incursion, so the Elizabethan movement of soldiers into Ireland, and I would like you to read a little bit more about the rebellions in Ireland in the Elizabethan period.

So pause the video now, read the slides on the next page about the conflicts in Ireland in the Elizabethan period, answer the comprehension questions, and resume the video once you're finished.

Well done on having a go at those questions.

Let's have a go over them now.

Remember as always, if you haven't quite written what I have, that's absolutely fine.

Just make sure that you improve your answer by pausing the video and rewriting if you need to.

So question number one, which two Old English families did the English rely on? An acceptable answer would have been the Butlers and Fitzgeralds.

A really good historical answer though would've been to give me a little bit more detail and write in a full sentence.

So the English relied on the Old English families of the Butlers and the Fitzgeralds.

Question number two, what evidence do we have that Hugh O'Neill was loyal to Elizabeth in his early life? An acceptable answer would've been that he lived with English people, but really brilliant answer would've been he had been trained in English manners and culture and lived in English homes.

Elizabeth I had also trusted him with having 600 troops.

You could've also gone even further and mentioned the fact that actually Hugh O'Neill had travelled to England in his early years and had even met Elizabeth I.

Question number three, why did Hugh O'Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, rebel against Elizabeth I? Well, firstly, an acceptable answer would've been that the English took his land.

But a really good answer would've been that the English had begun to try to take away his lands and power in Ulster.

Question number four, how long was war fought between the English and Hugh O'Neill? An acceptable answer would've been nine years, but a really good answer might've said that the war was known as the Nine Years War.

Really annoyingly, the Nine Years War actually went on for nearly 10 years, but don't tell historians that.

And finally, our challenge question, which I hope you had to go at.

Why was the fact that a large proportion of the Irish population and their leaders have remained Catholic seen as a threat to Elizabeth I? Well, I might've written something like this.

Elizabeth I saw Ireland is a backdoor which the Spanish might use as a base to invade England.

It was believed as the Irish were Catholic, the English, sorry, Elizabeth and the English could not trust them to not give support to the Spanish.

You can pause the video now and improve your answer if you need to, but I'm sure you did really, really well.

Okay, so across the course of these lessons, we've been considering this question.

Why was world opening up to Elizabeth I and her people? And when it comes to Ireland, we have two areas that we focus on here.

So there's definitely the religious aspect.

The Tudors don't necessarily trust the main Irish population because the main part of the Irish population are Catholic, and the main part of the Irish population remain Catholic for a very, very long time.

Today, the majority religion in Ireland to this day is still Catholicism, and that is despite decades, centuries of rule by the English.

We also have the wider picture of those conflicts with Spain leading to warfare, that meant that the Elizabethans were scared about leaving Ireland to its own devices, because they were concerned that the Spanish might send troops to Ireland to therefore gain support in Ireland and then invade England.

So we have warfare with Spain as one of the reasons why Elizabeth sent so many trips to Ireland.

We also have warfare between the Irish Gaelic chieftains, such as Hugh O'Neill during his rebellion, and the English soldiers themselves.

So we have war between the English and the Irish, but we also have the wider picture of the war between the English and the Irish being also part of the wider story of the wars between England and Spain.

So when we recap this inquiry question next lesson, our final lesson, we will find that there's complexity.

There are lots of areas that the Elizabethans are coming into contact with that fit into numerous themes, might fit into wealth, might fit into religion, might fit into warfare as well.

We're now going to have a go at our challenge task.

So I would like you to pause the video now and use your learning from the whole of this lesson to answer this question.

Why did Elizabeth I send so many soldiers to Ireland? I've written you a first impressive sentence, so my first sentence is Elizabeth I sent 19% of her soldiers to Ireland because.

I would like you to finish my sentence, writing at least for three or four sentences using these key words as well.

Gaelic chieftain, Hugh O'Neill, Catholicism, Spain, Philip II, Philip III.

resume the video once you're finished.

How did we do? Remember with my model answers as always, you might not have written exactly the same thing, but if it's near, well done.

Here's what I would've written.

Elizabeth I sent 19% of her soldiers to Ireland because of the constant rebellions against English rule.

The Tudors had announced themselves the monarchs of Ireland.

The English had challenge the power of the Gaelic chieftains and Hugh O'Neill rebelled against the English for control of Ireland.

The English fear of rebellion was made worse by the fact that King Philip II, so Elizabeth's great enemy, and his son King Philip III, sent their own troops to Ireland, seeing it as a handy base to launch attacks against England.

You can pause the video now, you can rewrite if you want to as well.

Well done on all your hard work today, I'm so, so impressed.

Remember to show off your knowledge to me by having a go at the final quiz on the next page.

But before you leave me for this week or this lesson today, what I would like you to do is share your work with me if possible.

So if you'd like to share your work with me, please ask your parent or carer to share your work in Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter by tagging @OakNational and learn with Oak.

I've been Miss Apps, and I'm really, really excited to see you for our next lesson, where we will bring all our learning together and write a final piece.

But for now, goodbye.