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.

Introduction; Chapter 1 Building a Godly Polity in Ireland; Chapter 2 The Failure of Reformed Protestant Plans; Chapter 3 Irish Constitutional Peculiarity; Chapter 4 The End of an Irish Mixed Polity; Chapter 5 Ireland's Lordships and an Absolutist State; Chapter 6 An Irish State Theory; epilogue Epilogue: Beyond the 1590s;