The Tudor conquest (or reconquest) of Ireland took place under the Tudor dynasty, which held the Kingdom of England during the 16th century. Following a failed rebellion against the crown by Silken Thomas, the Earl of Kildare, in the 1530s, Henry VIII was declared King of Ireland in 1542 by statute of the Parliament of Ireland, with the aim of restoring such central authority as had been lost throughout the country during the previous two centuries. Several people who helped establish the Plantations of Ireland also played a part later in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the West Country men. Despite support from the Spanish Empire during the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604), by 1603 the entire country was subject to English rule, exercised through the Privy Council of Ireland. It resulted in the imposition of English law, language and culture, the confiscation and redistribution of monastic lands, while the Protestant Church of Ireland replaced Catholicism as the national religion. The Flight of the Earls in 1607 largely completed the destruction of Gaelic Ireland and left the way open for the Plantation of Ulster, which established a large Protestant population in the north. Situation before the Tudors Ireland in 1500 was shaped by the Norman conquest, initiated by Cambro-Norman barons in the 12th century. Many of the native Gaelic Irish had been expelled from various parts of the country (mainly the east and southeast) and replaced with English peasants and labourers. A large area on the east coast, extending from the Wicklow Mountains in the south to Dundalk in the north (covering parts of modern counties of Dublin, Louth, Meath, Westmeath, Kildare, Offaly, and Laois), became known as the Pale. Protected along much of its length by a ditch and rampart, the Pale was a defended area in which English language and culture predominated and where English law was enforced by a government in Dublin. The Gaelic Irish were largely outside English jurisdiction, maintaining their own language, social system, customs, and laws. The English referred to them as "His Majesty's Irish enemies". In legal terms, they had never been admitted as subjects of the Crown. Ireland was not formally a realm, but rather a lordship; the title was assumed by the English monarch upon coronation. The rise of Gaelic influence resulted in the passing in 1366 of the Statutes of Kilkenny, which outlawed many social practices