The Old English (, meaning "old foreigners") were the descendants of the settlers who came to Ireland from Wales, Normandy, and England after the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169–71. The term is generally used by scholars for residents of The Pale and Irish towns after the mid-16th century, who became increasingly opposed to the Protestant "New English" who arrived in Ireland after the Tudor conquest of Ireland in the 16th and 17th centuries. Many of the Old English were dispossessed in the political and religious conflicts of the 16th and 17th centuries, largely due to their continued adherence to the Roman Catholic religion. As a result the distinction between "Old English" and "Native Irish" largely disappeared by 1700, as they were both equally barred from positions of wealth and power by the so-called New English settlers, who became known as the Protestant Ascendancy.