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Father Bradshaw examines the dissolution of the religious orders in Ireland as an episode of Irish ecclesiastical and political history, and of the English Reformation. He also analyses its relationship to Henry VIII's Irish policy as a whole and to the beginnings of English colonialism. He discusses in detail the state of the religious orders on the eve of suppression, the extent of opposition to the implementation of the suppression policy in all its stages, the secularisation of monastic lands and the results of dissolution for Irish society and for subsequent Irish history. Despite the sensitive issues involved, Catholic, Protestant and academic historians have shown remarkable unanimity in the interpretation of the episode of the dissolution in Ireland. A thorough knowledge of both primary and secondary sources enables Father Bradshaw to challenge many of the conventional assumptions.