The seventeenth-century diversification of the Irish presence in Iberia saw the Irish become increasingly mobile within the Spanish Empire. Soldiers of Irish origin entered Spanish service, serving in the Netherlands from the late sixteenth century and in Spain later on. Irish students frequented Spanish universities, and the colleges’ network provided a slender institutional foothold for Irish clergy throughout the peninsula and in the Spanish Netherlands. Given their increasingly diverse roles and their ever greater mobility, it was inevitable that Irish migrants would also venture across the Atlantic to Spain’s American territories. Already in the 1560s Irish visitors were present in the Viceroyalty of Mexico and in the Amazon River valley.1 Later they also appeared on the Caribbean coastlands, with some landing on the Caribbean islands, where other newcomers like the English, French and Dutch challenged Spanish authority. A very small number even made it to the Pacific coasts of Peru. As in Spain, the incoming Irish were subject to the religious authority of the New World Inquisitions, which sat in Mexico City, Cartagena (Colombia) and Lima (see Map 4).