The Pale - End of The Pale

End of The Pale

Eventually, after the 16th and 17th centuries, and especially after the Anglican Reformation and the Plantation of Ulster, many of the "Old English" settlers were gradually assimilated into the Irish population, in large part due to their relative reluctance to give up Roman Catholicism (those who worshiped in the Church of Ireland were rewarded with a higher status). They kept their version of the English language. They were in fact joined by other English Roman Catholics fleeing persecution under Queen Elizabeth I and subsequent monarchs. By the Tudor period, however, the Irish culture and language had regained most of the territory initially lost to the colonists: even in the Pale ‘all the common folk … for the most part are of Irish birth, Irish habit and of Irish language’.