Date Thesis Awarded
5-2011
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
History
Advisor
Nicholas Seth Popper
Committee Members
John W. Conlee
Paul W. Mapp
Abstract
The filid of Ireland, also known as harpers, bards, and rhymers, are a mysterious group, who have gone relatively uncelebrated in history despite the large amount of influence they had in their own time. Their eventual downfall has generally been attributed to the dearth of patronage that resulted from the Flight of the Earls in 1602, though in fact they had been the targets of a gradually escalating English legal campaign for at least a half a century prior to that. The filid were a highly educated, highly influential presence in Irish culture. Their influence in nurturing Irish resistance to Anglicization and militant rebellion to English encroachment made them a threat to the New English regime, as did their effect on the loyalties of the Old English. As a result, the filid became targets of the English government, facing legal attacks that intensified as the century progressed.
Recommended Citation
Joyce, Jennifer Brooke, "Hanged Harpers and Incinerated Instruments: Tudor Government Policies Towards Irish Poets in the Sixteenth Century" (2011). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 408.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/408
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Comments
Thesis is part of Honors ETD pilot project, 2008-2013. Migrated from Dspace in 2016.