In the 16th c. there occurred in Ireland the situation of an older culture meeting a newer, more dominant culture in the prevailing atmosphere of European colonisation. The Tudor conquest and the changes it accomplished in the government, politics, social and economic life, materially affected the institutions and landscape of Ireland. It was a conquest which took a further century of war, plantation and administrative planning to accomplish. Ireland, though conquered in the name of Henry II of England centuries earlier, had for practical purposes escaped subjugation. By the end of the 17th c. Ireland had been effectively reduced to colonial status and her social and economic life reflected that condition. This is the seventh volume in the comprehensive 11 volume "Gill History of Ireland," which covers Irish history from the fifth century to the 1960s.