Conclusion

Abstract

The Irish were only one of many migrant groups in the Iberian world and, as such, shared the conditions common to all early modern people on the move.¹ However, given the particularity of their religious status and the complexity of their political loyalties, the peripatetic Irish managed to forge a unique partnership with certain Spanish institutions, notably the Inquisition, to become a small but intriguingly distinct cog in Spain’s state-building machinery.² This book has attempted to capture the uniqueness of that migrant experience, without detaching it either from its general migration context or its changing social and political backdrop in Ireland and England. The evidence presented ascribes a surprisingly high level of agency to particular sections of the Irish migrant cohort. In particular it reveals how as both Catholics and English vassals, Irish merchants and clerics exploited their liminal status to establish themselves as brokers in the Hispano-English relationship. Particularly significant was their association with the Inquisition in the assimilation of approved incoming foreigners.