Introduction 简介rnThe growth of central government, as a result of economic expansion and the demands of early modern warfare,created new tensions. The situation in Ireland, where England had recently completed a military conquest, was further complicated by the official policy of plantations. In the early decades of the seventeenth century, a large number of native Irish landholders (particularly in Ulster) had been replaced by New English and Scottish protestant settlers, who totally dominated the colonial administration in the kingdom. They viewed their catholic1 neighbours with distrust and disdain2,and actively discriminated against them.rn