Did Spanish accounts of conquest have an influence on how the English saw the Irish as savages before the founding of Jamestown? Did they view distant peoples in Africa or Asia as subhuman savages, and if so what form did this perception take? What about other Europeans, was there any other group that the English generally believed to be inferior (not just hated enemies but really subhuman)?
EDIT: Rearranged my post significantly and made it a lot more concise.
Not at all but it is certainly one of the first. I may branch out from English thought briefly as to understand English thought one must understand the general European thought in regards to "race". Don't fret because you will get, to my knowledge, the first English reference to a 'lesser race' eventually. I just feel obligated to provide some context.
"Race" was something first conceived by that of Hesoid, an ancient Greek philosopher. His "5 Ages of Man" were a "Golden Man" who lived in a pseudo-Garden of Eden of plenty and eventually fell. Then a "Silver Man" who refused to worship the gods and Zeus struck them down. The Bronze Man were, as Hesoid put it, "no eaters of corn" and refused to take part in agriculture -- something that was looked down on by the Greeks (and particularly Hesoid) who held great reverence for "the land" and what they perceived as the sturdy, steadfast farmer. For example, in Oeconomica, one of Aristotle's pupils would say *"[a]griculture is the most honest of all such occupations; seeing that the wealth it brings is not derived from other men."*` They would also be cut down by their own hands (ie: war). Then you get the "demi-gods" who, while nearly extinct, would live on a fictitious "Isle of the Blessed" where "the grain giving soil bears its honey-blessed fruits."
We're seeing a repeated pattern here I hope you notice; agrarianism is idealized and it is being intimately linked with an emerging theory of biological race. Further, and perhaps most importantly to genocidal thought in the Early Modern and Modern world, biological race and extinction would be for the first time linked. However most of these writings were lost for the longest time and would only be discovered in the late Medieval Era.
The concepts of race would again begin to see blossoming in the 1300's. In 1323 admission to a Brunswick guild of tailors required proof of German descent. In 1366 The Statues of Kilkenny denounced "the manners, fashion and language of the Irish enemies." In 1395 Richard II coined the term "wild Irish" when he said irrois savages, nos enemis. However that is less "the Irish are subhuman" or even a 'racial hierarchy' as you describe and more of a distinction. It's creating definitions and applying stereotypes to biological race but not necessarily putting it on an objective scale.
Oeconomica, the work I mentioned earlier, would be rediscovered in 1295 and Aristotle's Politics was translated only in 1260. In Politics, and this is important, Aristotle would write "Those who are to cultivate the soil should best of all, if the ideal system is to be stated, be slaves . . . but as a second best they should be alien serfs." With this rediscovery of classical learning and especially Aristotelian learning we get the concept of natural slavery, that is, some people are slaves by nature; for Aristotle this was who he would define as 'barbarians'. This is where things get dicey because between the 1200's and 1400's the vague Medieval term "barbarian" gradually began to morph into one describing non-Christians who were deemed savage or 'uncivil' comparatively.
Now the picture has become clear and the issue apparent. We have a Native American people who were seen as barbaric -- non-Christian and uncivilized. They live in an almost Garden of Eden which is ready to be cultivated but, according to Aristotle, is best done by slaves. They, like Africans, were "naturally slaves" because of their barbarism and thus a sense of racial superiority was born. The Europeans were the rightful owners and cultivators of the Americas and the Native Americans and blacks were the "barbarians" who were misusing the land and who were to cultivate it for them.
Thus in 1519 we get the first textual case of racial superiority when Scottish theologian John Mair referred to the natives on the Caribbean Islands when he said they "live like beasts . . .the first person to conquer them, justly rules over them because they are by nature slaves." He would directly quote Aristotle in his reasoning when he said "as the Greeks should be masters over the barbarians because, by nature, the barbarians and slaves are the same." In 1591 Juan de Cardenas published Problemas y secretos maravillosos de las Indias which was the first modern treatise on racial physiology. Cardenas, in Kiernan's words, "distinguished Europeans from Indians by contrasting the composition and organization of our body and theirs." Encri Martinez in 1606 wrote that Indians and blacks had mental "abilities far inferior to that of Spaniards" and "in Spain a single man does more work in his fields than four Indians will do here.'
TL;DR:
So the answer to your question did they view the distant peoples of Africa and, you said Asia but you should have said America, as 'subhuman'? Yes.
English thought certainly had a distinction of a separate Irish race prior to the Tudor invasion of Ireland but it was less hierarchical and more descriptive I would say. While there certainly was discrimination born out of this form of racist classification (as I mentioned before in those German cases) what the English and Europeans as a whole (in general) perceived as 'lesser' race would be that of the, as Aristotle calls it, "natural slave" or the uncivilized, non-Christian barbarian. As in, the aboriginal people of North and South America would be the first to suffer the classification of a racial hierarchy in English (and in general European) thought.
TL;DR the TL;DR:
A biological theory of race would emerge in the last 1200's and blossom in the 1300's across Germany and Great Britain particularly. However these racial distinctions would only be first applied in a hierarchical manner (read: enslaving, classifying another group as 'subhuman' and 'natural slaves', etc.) with regards to the aboriginal Americans in the Caribbean and Central/South America.
Ben Kiernan, "Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur"