Castles and Colonists: An Archaeology of Elizabethan Ireland (Manchester Spenser)

Castles and colonists is the first book to examine life in the leading province of Elizabeth I's nascent empire. Klinglehofer shows how an Ireland of colonizing English farmers and displaced Irish "savages" are ruled by an imported Protestant elite from their fortified manors and medieval castles.

Richly illustrated, it displays how a generation of English "adventurers" including such influential intellectual and political figures as Spenser and Raleigh, tried to create a new kind of England, one that gave full opportunity to their Renaissance tastes and ambitions.

Based on decades of research, Castles and Colonists details how archaelogy had revealed the traces of a short-lived, but significant culture which has been, until now, eclipsed in ideological conflicts between Tudor queens, Hapsburg hegemony and native Irish traditions.