Possible husbands for Elizabeth I?

Not really, unfortunately. The Irish were very much looked down on, both the native Irish lords and the descendants of English lords who become Gaelicised. Any link-up with the Irish would raise questions in court. Also, the Irish were fiercely Catholic

Not entirely true. There was intermarriage between the English nobility and Anglo-Irish nobles into the 16th century - I seem to remember that Wolsey (to his later regret) stiffed an early love affair of Anne Boleyn because the guy was slated to marry the Earl of Ormonde's daughter.

As for religion, how fiercely Catholic were the Irish in, say, 1560? My impression is that Catholicism only became an expression of Irish proto-nationalism during Elizabeth's reign. (Remember that it was in Catholic Mary's reign that quasi-genocidal 'plantation' of Ireland was first proposed.) If Elizabeth marries an Irish earl early in her reign, the whole dynamic of Anglo-Irish relations is changed - you'd have an Irish king, and the founding of an Irish dynasty.

The practical problem is that no Irish earl was remotely suitable.
 
Anne Boleyn's self promoted betrothal to the Earl of Northumberland's heir was what upset Wolsey as the man in question was already betrothed to someone else...it was also in Wolsey's mind to marry Anne Boleyn to Piers Butler future Earl of Ormond to solve a dynastic arguement between the Butlers and the Boleyn's - the 7th Earl of Ormond left only daughters - one of whom was Sir Thomas Boleyn's mother - the Earldom passed to his cousin but the Boleyn's argued that the estates should have passed to the descendants of the 7th Earl's daugthers'. Sir Thomas was eventually granted the Earldom's of Wiltshire and Ormond by Henry VIII - but after his death the Earldom of Ormond (though not the Earldom of Wiltshire) were restored to the Butlers.
 
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