The Flight Of The Earls.Net - Article by Dr John McCavitt

AN IRISH TRILOGY

The wars of the seventeenth century and the colonisation of Ulster John McCavitt, Rostrevor

A frequent observation about the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland today is that they have more in common with the seventeenth rather than the twentieth century world. Certainly the ramifications of events which occurred three centuries ago continue to loom large. Seventeenth century Ireland witnessed three serious conflicts, three major confiscations of land and concluded with "the war of the three kings". In other words, throughout much of that period, Ireland, and the northern province of Ulster in particular, were in the throes of major upheavals; social, economic, political and, of course, religious. Therefore, while many observers affect bemusement at the apparent intractability of the "Northern Ireland problem" today, they rarely appreciate the complex developments of the seventeenth century which gave rise in no small measure to the difficulties which are presently being experienced. This essay will focus on the three large-scale wars of the seventeenth century, an Irish trilogy, and the confiscations which occurred thereafter, as the key to explaining why events from three centuries past have had such an abiding relevance.

Before embarking on this survey, it is worth emphasising that the "catholic" and "protestant" communities of seventeenth century Ireland were far from being homogeneous religio-political groupings. Ironically, religion at times actually served to accentuate divisions within them. Thus the majority of the Old English, a term used to describe the descendants of the original Anglo-Norman settlers of the twelfth century, and almost all the native or Gaelic Irish, were Roman Catholics. But, the fact that the Old English catholics embraced with greater alacrity the Tridentine reforms differentiated them from the native Irish who tended to cling to pre-Tridentine religious practices. Irish catholicism, often under attack during the century from the English authorities, also witnessed bitter internal struggles, not least among its clergy. Added to this were political divisions between the Old English and native Irish catholics; the former being more concerned to accommodate themselves with the English crown than the latter.

So far as protestant society was concerned it consisted of various, at times competing, sectional interest groupings. At the start of the century it mainly comprised New English, although there were also some Old English protestants. The New English were adherents of the established Church of Ireland, and their descendants, who came to Ireland during the sixteenth century. Increasingly, they dominated the central administration of the country. By the early years of the seventeenth century, they had been supplemented by a new wave of protestants, consisting mainly of former Elizabethan soldiers, known as "servitors". They remained in Ireland following the "Nine Years War", 1594-1603, determined to seek preferment and lands. When lands became available, however, at the time of the plantation of Ulster in 1610, they had to compete with prospective "planters" from England, Scotland and Wales.

While some of the planters conformed to the established Church of Ireland, the Scots among them introduced a presbyterian element to Irish protestant society. At a later stage too, following the Cromwellian reconquest of the country, 1649-52, protestant society had to assimilate yet another wave of settlers including Quakers, Baptists and members of other protestant sects. In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that tensions existed within Irish pro-

Nordirland in Geschichte und Gegenwart / Northern Ireland - Past and Present (HMRG, Beiheft 9) 1994 Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, Stuttgart

testant society as various groups strove to acquire and maintain position. So far as political and religious differences were concerned, these were most acerbic during the conflicts of the 1640s. Royalist, parliamentarian and Scots Covenanter causes in Great Britain all elicited support from Irish protestants.

The century began with the country embroiled in the Nine Years War, 1594-1603. It was the first of the three great conflicts which it endured in less than one hundred years. The ending of the war was coterminous with the demise of the Tudor dynasty in 1603. Far from closing a chapter on a bygone era, the ramifications of the conflict for Irish history were profound.

The Nine Years War was a rebellion against English domination. It mainly involved Ulster lords and their followers and was led by Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone. His base, in the heartland of Ulster, proved the launching pad for major successes against English forces. The most notable victory occurred at the Yellow Ford, 1598, when an English army suffered some 2,000 casualties.^l It was precisely because of the magnitude of the threat which this rebellion posed, menacing "the very survival of English rule in Ireland",² that its consequences proved so enduring.

Gaelic-style hit and run tactics often predominated in the war, but Tyrone was also capable of more sophisticated military strategy. This was manifested by his successful employment of trench warfare at the Yellow Ford in 1598 and later at the Moyry Pass in 1600. A further testimony that Tyrone's forces were formidable adversaries was provided by the failure of a series of Elizabethan generals to quell the rebellion. Even the flamboyant earl of Essex, victor against the Spanish at Cadiz, made little or no progress, despite the fact that he commanded a large, well-equipped army. Lord Mount joy, who finally brought Tyrone to terms, came close to personal disaster on numerous occasions.³

The climax of the Nine Years War occurred in 1601 at the battle of Kinsale. Four thousand Spanish troops had landed to bolster Tyrone's war effort. This seemed to be the decisive intervention which the earl had long been expecting. The Ulster lord marched south to link up with the Spaniards who had been besieged by the army of Lord Mount joy. In the ensuing battle Tyrone suffered a sensational reverse. Failing to link up with the Spaniards as planned, his army was routed. With the defeat at Kinsale, Tyrone's chances of outright victory over the English evaporated. The Spanish at Kinsale sued for terms and returned home.⁴ Yet, Kinsale was not the death-knell of Gaelic Ireland as has sometimes been suggested.

Lord Mount joy could not bring his adversaries to terms by conventional military means, despite his major battlefield success. A scorched earth policy had to be employed which affected large parts of Ulster. Tyrone later claimed that 60,000 people perished as a result of this policy.⁵ Certainly, large numbers, both combatants and non-combatants, died as a result of famine. Yet, Tyrone was not forced to make an unconditional surrender even though his position was dire. Instead, as a result of the treaty of Mellifont in 1603, he received extraordinarily favourable terms from the English.

Tyrone's treatment at Mellifont owed much to the vagaries of British dynastic politics; Queen Elizabeth 1's imminent death was decisive.⁶ She was to be succeeded by the Scottish

1 Nicholas Canny, From Reformation to Restoration: Ireland 1534-1660, Dublin 1987, p.143.

2 Nicholas Canny, Early Modern Ireland, c.1500-1700 in R. F. Foster (ed.), The Oxford illustrated history of Ireland, Oxford 1991, p.130.

3 Grenfell Morton, Elizabethan Ireland, London 1971, pp 134-5.

4 The battle of Kinsale has been analysed in depth in J. J. Silke, Kinsale: the Spanish intervention in Ireland at the end of the Elizabethan wars Liverpool 1970.

5 Micheline Kerney-Walsh, Destruction by peace: Hugh O'Neill after Kinsale, Armagh 1986, p.205.

6 Nicholas Canny, ,The treaty of Mellifont and the re-organisation of Ulster, 1603' in THE IRISH SWORD, IX, (1969), pp 249-62.

king, James VI, who had long been suspected by the English of clandestinely aiding and abetting the Irish during the Nine Years War. Consequently, it was feared that without a treaty Tyrone would be in a position to obtain more propitious terms from the new monarch. Besides, there was also a pressing financial consideration. The Irish revolt had cost the English exchequer some £2 million, a very substantial amount at the time.⁷ Therefore, Mellifont released the English government from what was proving to be a financial millstone round its neck.

All in all, the treaty of Mellifont proved a most unsatisfactory conclusion to the war for the English. It was a classic case of defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory. Previous Irish rebel leaders, particularly as the sixteenth century wore on, were punished by execution and confiscation of family lands. Yet, the "Grand Traitor", Tyrone, escaped unpunished. It was to be a decision that the English authorities lived to regret as it spawned enormous problems for the future.

In the aftermath of the treaty Tyrone's position was paradoxically powerful. The nightmare experience of the Nine Years War had petrified the London government, temporarily paralysing its resolution. For several years thereafter it pursued a policy of appeasement towards him which greatly angered its representatives in Dublin. That financial embarrassment inspired the London government's kid glove policy was exemplified by the fact that within three years of the treaty the number of English infantry in Ireland had been reduced to a skeleton force of less than 900.⁸ This was a remarkably small insurance against the risk of renewed revolt, particularly as the earl's ambitions had not been quenched.

Tyrone was neither defeatist nor disillusioned following Kinsale and the subjugation of his rebellion. His flight to the continent in 1607 was by no means a foregone conclusion.⁹ Rather, from the very first, he endeavoured to rebuild his powerbase. His determination to do so was manifested by his successful negotiations, begun as early as 1604, to obtain a Spanish pension.¹⁰What is more, his readiness to rejoin the fight against the protestant English was demonstrated by the fact that as early as 1605 he was fomenting a new "catholic" revolt in Ireland. This time he had grounds for believing that he could secure substantial support among the catholic Old English who had largely remained aloof from his previous rebellion. Tyrone's flight to the continent was not the product of defeatism. Quite the contrary, it was precipitated by the fact that he had re-engaged in conspiratorial machinations.¹¹

The Old English catholics were descendants of the Anglo-Norman settlers in Ireland. The native Irish had been their traditional enemies. This state of affairs persisted for some time even after the Reformation when the English crown passed into the protestant fold.¹² Throughout much of the sixteenth, and particularly the seventeenth, centuries the Old English catholics engaged in a complex high wire act, seeking to balance their loyalty to the English crown in temporal matters with their spiritual allegiance to the pope. In James I, (1603-25) they anticipated a sovereign who would stabilise their position and grant them religious toleration. Instead, much to their chagrin, his reign heralded an unprecedented degree of persecution. The new king, as it turned out, was but the first of the Stuarts to dash Irish catholic aspirations.

7 F.C.Dietz, English Public Finance, 1558-1641, New York 1932, pp 432-3.

8 John McCavitt, The lord deputyship of Sir Arthur Chichester in Ireland, 1605-16, unpublished Ph.D thesis (Queen's University Belfast, 1988), p.60.

9 See note 6.

10 Kerney-Walsh, op. cit., pp 152-80.

11 Ibid, documents 43A, 56B, 72A.

12 The English crown temporarily reverted to catholicism during the reigns of Mary I, 1553-8 and James II, 1685-9.

James I philosophically favoured toleration but realised that he had to placate the more militant protestant tendencies of his English subjects. Thus, when Lord Deputy Chichester began a strident anti-catholic policy in Ireland in 1605, James found his room for manoeuvre restricted. Chichester believed that the long-term security of English hegemony in Ireland depended upon its population being converted to protestantism. While he acknowledged that "persuasive" measures were required to complete this task, coercion was employed in the short term to force the Old English catholics, who had been initially targeted, to become protestants. Heavy fines were meted out and spells of imprisonment imposed on a number of leading citizens while thousands of others were subjected to the one shilling fine provisions of Statute 2 Elizabeth for failure to attend protestant service on the sabbath.13

The earl of Tyrone sought to tap resultant indignation among the catholic Old English in an endeavour to form a "league" to eject the protestant English from Ireland. To this end, during the period 1605-7, he set about orchestrating a revolt. Fearing that he had been compromised by an informer, however, Tyrone and many of his leading followers departed Ireland in September 1607 in what has come to be known as "the flight of the earls".

The "flight", followed by Sir Cahir O'Doherty's small-scale revolt in Ulster in April 1608, led to the Plantation of Ulster. As a result of these events, large areas of the province were confiscated by the crown and mostly redistributed to protestant settlers, "deserving" Irish retaining between one quarter and one fifth of the lands in question.14 In Dublin government circles the plantation was considered as a long overdue settling of accounts with Tyrone and his allies for their involvement in the Nine Years War.

Paranoia motivated this radical attempt to solve the Ulster problem. Inspired by the memory of the Nine Years War, an acute apprehension had persisted for some time in London about the dangers of renewed revolt in Ulster and the expenses that this might entail. The flight of the earls and O'Doherty's rebellion fuelled these fears. As a result, the London government resorted to radical measures to extirpate the menace of a northern revolt.

The Ulster plantation was considered by its sponsors to be a refined version of the previous plantation strategies practiced in Ireland. Indeed there was a certain symmetry to the government's plans. Estates of 2,000, 1,500 and 1,000 acres were made available while an almost equal proportion of land was allotted to English and Scots landlords who were officially described as "undertakers". They were thus known because they undertook to fulfil certain conditions which the government stipulated. These included requirements to reside on their property for five years, introduce a quota of twenty-four able bodied males per thousand acres and to provide arms and at least a bawn (a fortified enclosure) for defence of their property. The undertakers were given a three year period to fulfil their building and settlement conditions.15

Tenants were obliged to build houses near the bawn not only for security purposes but to further the government's aim of sponsoring the development of towns. Urbanisation was considered a key component of the crown's aim to create a market economy in Ulster. To this end also, there was to be a greater emphasis on tillage rather than traditional Gaelic pastoralism. Moreover, by seeking to eliminate the Gaelic tradition of transhumance the authorities hoped to deprive malcontents of opportunities to practice more nefarious activities.16

Some of the particularly notable aspects of the Ulster plantation are worthy of more detailed consideration. A striking one was the principle of "segregation" which informed it.

13 John McCavitt, ,Lord Deputy Chichester and the English government's Mandates policy in Ireland, 1605-1607' in: RECUSANT HISTORY, XX no.3, (1991), p 320-35.

14 Aidan Clarke, ,The Plantations of Ulster' in: Liam De Paor (ed.), Milestones in Irish history, Dublin 1986, pp 65-6.

15 Philip Robinson, The Plantation of Ulster: British settlement in an Irish landscape, 1600-1670, Dublin 1984, passim. 16 Ibid.

An Irish trilogy

English and Scottish undertakers, for security reasons, were forbidden to allow native Irish to reside on their estates.¹⁷ Segregation often proved impractical in the short term as the native Irish remained in numbers on the estates of English and Scottish undertakers. Later, as the flow of protestant migrants increased, the principle became increasingly effectual. As a result, it goes some way to explaining the peculiar modern-day geo-political configuration of the province of Ulster in which there are districts where descendants of either the native Irish or settler populations predominate.

That Scots were given such prominence in the plantation is also worth elaborating. They benefited from the settlement because their king, lames VI, was the heir to the English throne left vacant by the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. As a Scotsman, lames I (of England) fostered the interests of his fellow countrymen in the exercise of crown policy in England. Thus, when the Ulster lands were confiscated following the flight of the earls in 1607, he determined to grant prominent Scotsmen a substantial proportion.

The involvement of so many Scots in the Ulster project particularly upset the servitors who felt that they had been cheated of their rightful rewards as conquerors. Although they received a limited allocation of lands, they were incensed because it had been the English who had borne such a huge cost in manpower and money to subdue Tyrone's rebellion. As historians agree, however, the success of the plantation derived from the fact that so many Scots were prepared to migrate to the contiguous settlement in Ulster. Before long, indeed, the crown authorities had reason to be pleased with the relatively high degree of Scottish migration at a time when getting protestants to Ulster was considered the over-riding priority. In the early stages of the settlement, "in the frontier ethos of Irish protestantism", it did not matter that many of these Scots were of a calvinist persuasion. By contrast, during the 1630s, when the royal authorities were insisting on conformity to the established Church of Ireland, the non-conformist Scots in Ulster eventually became considered a hindrance rather than a help to crown policy.¹⁸ By the end of the decade, as a result of government pressure on the religious front, considerable numbers of Scots returned to their homeland.¹⁹

Although the official scheme was known as the plantation of Ulster only six of its nine counties (Armagh, Cavan, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Donegal and Coleraine) were affected. County Coleraine became the focus of special attention. Anxious to secure substantial private funding to ensure that the settlement was a success, most of the county was offered to various London companies such as the Haberdashers and Vintners. As a result of this unique connection, Co. Coleraine was renamed Co. Londonderry and the name of the city of Derry was also changed to Londonderry.²⁰ Of the three Ulster counties not included in the official Ulster plantation Co.Monaghan had been the subject of a settlement in the 1590s which was reconstituted in the early seventeenth century.²¹As for counties Antrim and Down, substantial progress had already been made there in attracting protestant settlers in the early seventeenth century as a result of private enterprise. Two Scotsmen, lames Hamilton and Hugh Montgomery, played leading roles in this respect.²²

The official Ulster plantation, in its early stages, did not live up to government expectations. Too many undertakers failed to abide by their conditions. In particular, the building

17 Aidan Clarke, ,Pacification, plantation and the catholic question, 1603-23', in T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin and F. J. Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland, III' Early Modern Ireland, 1534-1691 Oxford, 1976, p.197.

18 Aidan Clarke, ,The Genesis of the Ulster Rising of 1641', in Peter Roebuck (ed.), Plantation to partition, Belfast 1981, p.43.

19 Raymond Gillespie, Colonial Ulster: The Settlement of East Ulster, 1600-1641, Cork 1985, p.82.

20 T.W.Moody, The Londonderry Plantation, 1609-40, Belfast 1939.

21 P.J .Duffy, , The territorial organisation of Gaelic landownership and its transformation in Co.Monaghan, 1591-1640', in: IRISH GEOGRAPHY, XIV, (1981), pp 1-26.

22 Raymond Gillespie, Colonial Ulster: The Settlement of East Ulster, 1600-1641, Cork 1985; M.Perceval-Maxwell, The Scottish migration to Ulster in the reign of James I, 2nd ed., London 1990.

John McCavitt

programme proceeded slowly while the native Irish often remained on the estates of the English and Scottish undertakers. What is more, there was a slow rate of migration by British settlers until 1614. Between 1614 and 1619 there was a more rapid increase, followed by stabilisation and to some extent decline until 1630.²³ Overall, before the 1630s, there was not a large-scale British migration to Ulster.²⁴ Then, from the mid-1630s, large numbers of Scots, escaping unfavourable economic conditions in their homeland, began to arrive.²⁵

The government's allocation of three years for the undertakers to fulfil their building and settlement conditions proved to be pitifully inadequate. On the whole, as Dr Robinson has pointed out, the plantation did not develop "in response to political decisions taken in the early seventeenth century". Instead he has emphasised how "environmental factors were to prove more important than governmental controls in shaping the new settlement pattern".²⁶

Life for the British settlers who migrated to Ulster was particularly perilous during the first

decade of the plantation. The attacks, or the threat of attack, by discontented Irish more than likely retarded the development of the settlement. Certainly, the initial steps in the plantation process encountered a passive response from the indigenous inhabitants. Before long, however, this gave way to sporadic violence. The so-called Ulster conspiracy of 1615 indicated that a feeling of intense grievance permeated sections of the Ulster Irish populace. It also demonstrated, of course, that a full-scale attack against the settlers was not feasible, not least because the Ulster Irish were poorly armed.²⁷

Despite the ignominious failure of the 1615 conspiracy, it remains true that violence damaged the plantation process. If the discontented were unable at that stage to muster a concerted attempt to overthrow the plantation it is equally clear that the sporadic attacks which occurred were sufficient to generate great alarm among the settlers. The years 1616-19, most strikingly, witnessed some 300 woodkerne (outlaws) being killed or executed for attacking protestant settlers in Ireland. Counties Londonderry, Tyrone and Wexford suffered most in this respect.²⁸ Therefore, the contemporary protestant depiction of the Ulster settlers working "as it were wth the Sworde in one hande and the Axe in the thother" had substantial basis in reality in the early stages of the plantation.²⁹ By 1624, however, the high level of violence had temporarily subsided. Lord Deputy Falkland remarked in that year, cautiously it must be admitted, "since Ireland was Ireland, there never was such universal tranquility as at this instant".³⁰

As many as 100,000 people from Britain settled in Ireland during the first 40 years of the

seventeenth century.³¹ They did not all go to Ulster. The revitalised Munster plantation, for

instance, attracted a considerable number. Of the Ulster undertakers Dr Robinson has noted that those of English origin largely came from East Anglia and the Midlands. They were mostly of "moderate means". As for the Scottish undertakers, most of whom were "middle-ranking Scottish lairds", the vast majority came from the central lowland belt.³² In all, by the mid 1630s some 34,000 British people had migrated to Ulster. This was a substantial number

23 Philip Robinson, The Plantation of Ulster: British settlement in an Irish landscape, 1600-1670, Dublin 1984, p.97.

24 Aidan Clarke, ,The Irish economy, 1600-60', in Moody, Martin, Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland, III, p.175.

25 Perceval-Maxwell, op. cit., pp 313-5.

26 Robinson, op. cit., preface.

27 Sir Arthur Chichester to privy council, 19 May 1608 (P.R.O., S.P.63/224/106).

28 Lord deputy to the privy council, 29 Sept. 1619 in the Calendar of State Papers, Ireland,

1615-25, Nendeln 1974, pp 262-3.

29 T.W.Moody, The Londonderry Plantation, 1609-40, Belfast 1939, p.239.

30 Lord deputy to Conway, 24 April 1624 in the Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1615-25,

pp 484-6.

31 Nicholas Canny, Kingdom and colony: Ireland in the Atlantic World, 1560-1800, Baltimore 1988, p.38.

32 Robinson, op. cit., pp 77-80.

An Irish trilogy

given that the total population of Ireland may have been as low as 750,000 at the beginning of the seventeenth century.³³How, then, did the plantation affect Ulster society?

In some respects, profound changes soon occurred. Most obviously the demographic complexion of the province was transformed by the arrival of English and Scottish settlers. In other ways too the difference was marked.

"The social norms of Gaelic Ireland, already changing slowly in the sixteenth century, were rapidly dismantled and replaced with English standards of social order. Terms such as "leaseholder" and "freeholder" became the normal description of a man's place in the social order rather than the older vocabulary of Gaelic Ireland."³⁴

In the legal sphere, the extension of the English common law system, already underway prior to the plantation, was also institutionalised before long. Regular bi-annual visits by judges of assize played a key role in underpinning this process.³⁵ Government surveys of the plantation's progress make it clear that at least some undertakers fashioned their estates according to the official plantation mould. To some extent too Ulster was transformed into a market economy as an embryonic urban structure developed.³⁶

In other respects, by contrast, native Irish culture pervaded Ulster society for some time. The majority of tenants, whether Irish or British, resided in modified versions of "primitive" thatched cottages. Of this development Professor Canny has concluded that "for the overwhelming majority of British settlers in Ireland during the first half of the seventeenth century it was a question of accommodating themselves to Irish-style residences rather than the reverse process that had been intended". In the economic sphere, also, change was slow. The traditional Gaelic emphasis on pastoralism, as opposed to British tillage, prevailed for some time. Once more, at least temporarily, the protestant settlers became more acculturated to native Irish practice than vice versa.³⁷

Overall, the plantation wrought considerable changes in Ulster society in the short term. Yet, they were not as radical as intended. This probably explains in part why a substantial section of the Ulster Irish eventually reconciled themselves with the settlement, at least for a time. Other factors encouraged this process. Dr Gillespie has argued, for example, that the "deserving" Irish proprietors, who were allocated estates in the plantation settlement, had a stake which they felt was worth preserving.³⁸ What is more, the plantation opened up new opportunities for large numbers of Ulster Irish to negotiate favourable terms as tenants on the plantation estates of British landlords, owing to the early shortfall in available protestant manpower.³⁹

With time, however, many of those Irish proprietors and tenants who had reason to be satisfied with their stake in the Ulster plantation became disillusioned. So far as the proprietors were concerned financial pressures, contingent on their efforts to acculturate to an anglicised way of life, led many into financial difficulty as a result of heavy mortgaging of property. So too, the Ulster natives who had benefited by the gains they had made as tenants on the estates of British undertakers later became dissatisfied. As the flow of protestant settlers increased the services of Irish tenants were jettisoned.⁴⁰ All in all, from an economic point of view, a fund of discontent gradually built up. In combination with the fact that there were

33 Canny,op. cit., pp 72-96.

34 Raymond Gillespie, ,Continuity and change: Ulster in the seventeenth century' in C. Brady, M. O.'Dowd and B. Walker (eds.), ULSTER: An Illustrated History, London 1989, p.l04.

35 McCavitt, op. cit., ch.6.

36 Robinson, op. cit., ch.7.

37 Canny, op. cit., pp 48-52.

38 Raymond Gillespie, ,The End of an Era: Ulster and the outbreak of the 1641 rising', in C. Brady and R.Gillespie _eds.), Natives and Newcomers: The making of Irish colonial society, 1534.1641, Dublin 1986, pp 193-4.

39 Canny, op. cit., p.12.

40 Ibid, p.58.

those who had harboured serious grievances about the plantation from the start, a partial explanation is provided for the catholic rising which took place in Ulster in 1641. Indeed, as Professor Clarke has remarked, "what was originally intended was precisely what the preconditions would suggest, the overthrow of the plantation settlements". To fully understand why this rising enveloped Ulster, and, before long, the rest of catholic Ireland, one must consider that the 1641 rising resulted from a plot that "changed fundamentally in character between conception and executiort".⁴¹

The 1641 "rebellion" resulted from a complex set of long and short term factors that included, respectively, grievances with the Ulster plantation as well as concern for the plight of the king by 1641 and the ramifications of this for catholics in Ireland. The Ulster rising, as finally enacted, was depicted by its participants as a pre-emptive strike in support of the king against the supporters of his parliamentary adversaries among the English settlers in Ulster. Thus the conspirators, who did not consider themselves rebels, determined to leave the Scots settlers unmolested. By gaining a position of military strength, to be achieved in part by the seizure of Dublin castle, they hoped to improve their position by supporting the King against the parliamentarians. An ascendant puritan parliament, it was feared, would pursue policies acutely inimical to Irish catholics. By justifying their actions as "fighting to preserve the King's power in order to protect the liberties, religion, estates and persons of Catholics in Ireland" the rising was able to spread outside Ulster, gaining the support of the Old English catholics.

The nature of the rising actually owed much to the machinations of King Charles I in Ireland. During the Spring of 1640 the Irish lord lieutenant, the earl of Strafford, began raising a predominantly catholic Irish army of 9,000 which could be used in support of the king. It was planned but in the end not employed against the Scots in their dispute with King Charles over religious issues during the summer of that year. This was due to the fact that the Scots had managed to coerce Charles into accepting their terms before his Irish army was ready for action. The prospect remained that the new army could be used in Charles's struggle with the English parliamentarians. Realising this, the king's opponents in England successfully lobbied to have it disbanded. Nevertheless in Ireland a group of Old English colonels, who had been linked with the new Irish army, and acting it seems with the king's approval, laid plans in 1641 to seize Dublin castle. The Ulster conspirators, led by Sir Phelim O'Neill, who eventually launched the rising in October 1641, liaised at one stage with the colonels before the latter abandoned their plans in September owing to the "apparent success" of Charles's overtures to the Scots. The Ulster Irish, by contrast, pressed ahead, "presuming upon the King's partly revealed wishes and mimicking the colonels' plot, without his or their privity [...] counting on the King's new alliance to ensure that the Scots would remain neutral in Ulster if they were not meddled with".

Whatever the reasons for the rising, the Ulster conspirators and their allies among the Old English undoubtedly realised that they would pay dearly should King Charles I lose his struggle with the parliamentarians. This apprehension would have been greatly accentuated as a result of the "massacres" which had occurred in Ulster after the outbreak of hostilities.

Stories soon spread that there had been a large-scale slaughter of protestants in the northern province. Instead of being a carefully orchestrated campaign with relatively conservative aims the military action in Ulster soon degenerated into a sectarian bloodbath. Professor Canny has attributed this development to the "popular" aspect of the rising which resulted in its leaders soon losing contro1.⁴² Inspired, variously, by envy, greed or deep resentment of their plight as

41 The account of the causation of the 1641 rising is based on Aidan Clarke, ,The Genesis of the Ulster Rising of 1641', in Roebuck, op. cit., pp 29-45.

42 Canny, op. cit., pp 60-5.

An Irish trilogy

a result of the plantation, the Ulster natives availed of the opportunity to strike at those who had profited at their expense. Thus, there was a marked economic element to the popular disturbances as land and valuables were seized. This also explains the ritualistic stripping of protestant settlers, "seemingly to symbolize that they were being forced to depart in the same penniless state in which they arrived".⁴³

Although many catholics soon suffered reprisals, it was the initial slaughter of several thousand protestants that has etched the deepest mark on Irish history, precisely because it carved an ineradicable imprint on the Irish protestant psyche. This was due in part to the fact that myths were propagated at the time, and perpetuated for several centuries thereafter, by protestant propagandists that hundreds of thousands of protestants had been massacred.⁴⁴ In reality, the propagandists had little reason to exaggerate. Modern research has shown that their representation of the rising as attempted genocide is only partially invalidated. The total protestant population of Ulster was somewhere in the region of 40,000 by 1641. Of these, some 12,000 died in the initial stages of the rising as a result of massacre, military combat or privation.⁴⁵

The combined effects of protestant propaganda and the fact that very large numbers of protestants had perished in the initial stages of the 1641 rising explain why the massacres have had such an enduring importance. Inspired by the memory of 1641, protestant apprehension about the prospect of a renewed catholic onslaught, or a "siege mentality", has often been a prominent feature in subsequent Irish history.

The so-called 1641 rebellion actually lasted until 1652. Two major factors account for this. In the first instance there was the arrival from the continent of talented military commanders such as the Gaelic Irishman Owen Roe O'Neill and Thomas Preston of Old English extraction. O'Neill, in particular, earned himself lasting fame for greatly boosting the military effort of the Ulster Irish.⁴⁶ What is more, the outbreak of the English civil war in 1642 proved decisive in crippling the capability of the English to bring the "rebels" to heel. Instead, throughout much of the 1640s the catholic confederacy in Ireland was faced by representatives of the crown who vacillated between rejecting their demands and wooing them, depending on the king's fortunes in the English civil war. The earl of Ormond played a key role on the king's behalf in these matters. More staunch opposition to the catholics, by contrast, was provided by a Scots covenanter army, led by General Monro. It arrived in 1642 to protect the Scots settlers in Ulster.⁴⁷

In the early stages of the rising, the catholic alliance of native Irish and Old English achieved control over large areas of Ulster as well as the rest of Ireland and retained it until the onslaught of the English parliamentary army led by Oliver Cromwell in 1649. At only one juncture in the intervening period did the catholics have a real chance of dominating the entire country, following Owen Roe O'Neill's major victory at Benburb in 1646. That opportunity soon vanished as a result of indecision.⁴⁸

Why the catholics did not manage to secure outright success following the outbreak of the conflict in 1641 owed much to the fissures within the catholic alliance along the traditional native Irish/Old English fault lines. Although they formed a "Confederacy" in Kilkenny in 1642 the appearance of catholic unity belied the reality that they were deeply divided. This

43 Ibid, p.62.

44 Note that a law was passed by the protestant controlled Irish parliament in 1662 stipulating that the outbreak of the rising should be commemorated annually. See T.C. Barnard, ,The uses of

23 October 1641 and Irish Protestant celebrations' in: ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW, CVI, no. 421, (1991), pp 889-920.

45 P. J. Corish, ,Tbe rising of 1641 and the catholic confederacy, 1641-5', in Moody, Martin, Byrne (eds), A New History of Ireland, III, pp 291-2.

46 Owen Roe O'Neill's career has been detailed by Jerrold Casway in Owen Roe O'Neill and the Struggle for Catholic Ireland, Philadelphia 1984.

47 David Stevenson, Scots Covenanters and Irish Confederates, Belfast 1981.

48 See note 46.

John McCavitt

disunity was thrown into even sharper relief following the arrival of Archbishop Rinuccini as papal nuncio in 1645. He was determined in any negotiations with the crown authorities to insist on formal guarantees for the catholic religion, bitterly opposing those elements in Old English society who were prepared to compromise on this matter. Before long, he became increasingly identified with the native Irish in the disputes which wracked the Confederacy.⁴⁹

Throughout the 1640s constant efforts were made to effect a rapprochement between the catholic confederates and the crown. Following the outbreak of the rising the king, in whose name the conspirators claimed they were acting, disavowed the action. At various stages during the 1640s, however, the royal authorities made overtures to secure Irish catholic military support in the English civil war. Until 1648 nothing came of this. When, too late, news arrived in Ireland at the end of the year that Charles was to be put on trial for his life the royalist authorities finally agreed to the "Ormond peace" which was concluded in 1649. As a result, large sections of the catholic community in Ireland, in particular the Old English, were officially accepted into the fold of the royalist cause. When the rising ended many of the Old English catholic leaders joined Charles II in exile.⁵⁰

It was a further measure of the complexity of Irish politics in the late 1640s that the Ulster Scots presbyterians, outraged by the execution of Charles I, also agreed to put themselves at the disposal of Ormond, the Lord Lieutenant.⁵¹This appearance of a unified front against the parliamentarians, led by Oliver Cromwell, ill-concealed the reality that the royalists in Ireland were hopelessly fragmented. This was illustrated by the fact that they were unable to undertake a serious battlefield engagement, preferring to rely on a policy of defending fortified towns.⁵² This resulted in a number of incidents which earned Cromwell an immortal place in Irish history. As a result of the slaughter of the inhabitants of Drogheda and Waterford he has been accorded a demonic reputation in Irish nationalist historiography. Yet, by the contemporary rules of war, Cromwell had the right to refuse quarter to such towns carried by storm after rejecting a call to surrender. None the less, it was largely because of these actions that it has been remarked of him that he "Trod on Irish soil for only nine months, but few men's footprints have been so deeply imprinted on Irish history".⁵³

Overall, the concluding years of the conflict (1649-52) consisted of a series of attacks on towns which occasionally resulted in heavy Cromwellian casualties. In the end, unlike in 1603, when the war concluded "no general terms of surrender had been negotiated, and with few exceptions nothing had been guaranteed in the surrenders except freedom from immediate pillage".⁵⁴ Having reconquered Ireland, what did the Cromwellians do with it?

Before analysing what happened, it is worth emphasising that the protestant state in Ireland had taken on a new complexion. During what has come to be known as the Commonwealth era, the episcopalian Church of Ireland was discarded, as was its mother church in England. Instead minority protestant sects, including anabaptists and quakers, thrived in Ireland.⁵⁵ So far as catholics were concerned, the Commonwealth heralded a period of acute religious repression. The Cromwellians were convinced that their predecessors had not tackled the problems posed by Ireland with sufficient vigour, a mistake they intended not to repeat.⁵⁶ Hardly

49 P.J.Corish, ,Ormond, Rinucinni and the confederates, 1645-9', in Moody, Martin, Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland, III, pp 317-35.

50 P.J.Corish, ,The rising of 1641 and the catholic confederacy, 1641-5', in: ibid., pp 289-316; P. J. Corish, ,Ormond, Rinucinni and the confederates, 1645-9', in: ibid., pp 317-35.

51 P.J. Corish, ,Ormond, Rinucinni and the confederates, 1645-9', in: ibid., p.334.

52 P. J. Corish, ,Tbe Cromwellian conquest, 1649-53', in: ibid., pp 336-52.

53 R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600-1972, London 1988, p.10l.

54 See note 52.

55 David Dickson, New Foundations: Ireland 1660-1800, Dublin 1987 p.4.

56 T. C. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland: English government and reform in Ireland 1649-1660, Oxford 1975, p.12.

An Irish trilogy

surprisingly, therefore, under the Commonwealth the catholic church in Ireland came under serious pressure as dozens of priests were executed and hundreds more exiled.⁵⁷ Greater religious repression was only part of the price that catholics paid for the 1641 rising. Of equal, if not greater concern, was the extent to which their lands were expropriated. That the catholic share of land in Ireland fell from three fifths in 1641 to 10 per cent by 1660 illustrates just how severely they were penalised.⁵⁸"For the Old Irish it was the last of a series of blows: the Old English lost almost everything in one catastrophe".⁵⁹ Nor were Irish catholics the only ones to be expropriated at that time. Protestant royalists, including the exiled Ormond, also had their lands confiscated.^6O

The Commonwealth land settlement in Ireland owed its origins to the Adventurers' act of 1642. Despite the widely reported massacre of Irish protestants in 1641 the response of their English brethren at the time has been described as "thoroughly Lilliputian". Enthusiasm to sponsor a relieving army in England was muted. This was due to the fact that the rising originated in Ulster where so much land had already been confiscated from the indigenous population. That there would be only lean pickings to reward any would-be avengers proved crucial. It was only when the Old English catholics of the Pale joined the rebellion, awakening "dreams of new riches", that the English were spurred into passing the Adventurers' act. It was hoped £1 million would be raised from private individuals to finance the repression of the rising on the basis of a security of 2.5 million acres of "profitable" Irish land being made available to repay the subscribers.⁶¹

As indicated previously, an early English effort to reclaim Ireland was largely frustrated by the outbreak of the English civil war. When, finally, elements of the victorious Cromwellian army were transferred to Ireland, control of the country was regained. By the time the war was brought to a conclusion in 1652, though, there were many more than the Adventurers who were expecting a pay-off in Irish land. In addition, 35,000 Cromwellian soldiers received land grams.⁶²

Typically of the new regime, the land settlement enshrined several novel features. Most notably, property in all four Irish provinces was simultaneously confiscated for the first time. The scheme also contained a radical provision to transplant all catholics to Connacht in the west. Owing to the "hard economic consideration" that catholic tenants were required to work the land of the new colonists, it was eventually decided that only catholic landlords and their immediate dependants should be transplanted.⁶³

While the Cromwellians aspired to much more vigorous policies concerning the catholic Irish, experience once again proved that theoretical solutions were impractical in reality. An early indication that things were not going as planned was provided by the fact that Cromwellian soldiers intermarried with the catholic Irish.⁶⁴ What is more, too many Cromwellian soldiers sold out for short term gain to render the settlement any realistic chance of success. Even the transplantation to Connacht did not transpire as planned.⁶⁵Before long, the

57 Nicholas Canny, From Reformation to Restoration: Ireland 1534-1660, Dublin 1987, p.222.

58 David Dickson, op. cit., p.3.

59 P.J.Corish, ,The Cromwellian regime, 1650-60', in Moody, Martin, Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland, III, p.386.

60 W. F. T. Butler, Confiscation in Irish history, Dublin 1917, ch.5.

61 Karl Bottigheimer, English money and Irish land: the Adventurers in the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland, Oxford 1971, pp 35-41.

62 Barnard, op. cit., ch.1.

63 P. J. Corish, ,The Cromwellian regime, 1650-60', in Moody, Martin, Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland, III, pp 364-5.

64 R. Dunlop, Ireland under the commonwealth: being a selection of documents relating to the government of Ireland, 1651-9, Manchester 1913, I, p. CLXI.

65 P. J. Corish, ,The Cromwellian regime, 1650-60', in Moody, Martin, Byrne (eds), A New History of Ireland, III, pp 364-8.

John McCavitt

"punitive policies which aimed less at converting the Irish than at bludgeoning them into submission and leaving them too weak to rise again" were mitigated somewhat.⁶⁶ In an era of diminished population, low rents and high wages, ordinary catholic tenants and labourers actually profited during the 1650s.⁶⁷More substantive relief for the catholic landholding class, however, only occurred when the Stuarts were restored to the throne.

When Charles II, the so-called "Merry Monarch" ascended the throne in 1660, Irish catholics in general felt that the dark era of persecution and expropriation had passed and that they were on the path to liberty of conscience and a general restitution of their position. This was due in no small measure to the fact that the "Ormond peace" of 1649, had offered them religious toleration and security of property.⁶⁸ Catholic hopes were again high that a Stuart monarch would foster their interests - aspirations which were to be far from fulfilled. This was because the new king's inheritance was an onerous one, as he sought to reconsolidate the position of the Stuart dynasty. Nowhere was his legacy more complex than in Ireland. Central to Charles II's problems there was his obligation to repay the Stuart debt to catholics in Ireland, particularly the Old English, for their earlier support. In seeking to do so he had to tread carefully. Such a policy encountered the danger of alienating Irish protestants, particularly as they now included many former Cromwellian soldiers.

As was the case under his predecessors, Charles II's catholic policy was "always dependent on the tidal flows of English politics".⁶⁹In the early days of his reign, the English people, who had welcomed him to the throne, were prepared to permit him some degree of indulgence in honouring old Stuart debts. Thus, the "Restoration" settlement in Ireland duly returned lands to some of those who had been expropriated by Cromwell, including protestant royalists such as Ormond and catholics as well. To the considerable disappointment of the Irish catholics, however, their share of land rose only to 20 per cent.⁷⁰ This was because Charles's policy provoked a furious outcry from Irish protestants, especially the beneficiaries of the Commonwealth settlement.

Protestant anger was such that a major plot was hatched to seize control of Dublin Castle in May 1663.⁷¹ In view of such intense discontent the king was obliged to curtail the amount of land returned to catholics. At times, too, during Charles II's reign, political circumstances resulted in Irish catholics suffering persecution. Following the discovery of a "Popish Plot" in England in 1678, for example, when anti-popery was once more rampant, catholics in Ireland also bore the brunt of militant protestant wrath. This was epitomised in the case of Oliver Plunkett who was executed in 1681 on a fabricated charge of treason related to the plot.⁷²

Overall, Charles II's reign proved unsatisfactory for both protestants and catholics in Ireland. The protestants experienced a great sense of insecurity, particularly at the beginning and end of his reign. At its outset, the Restoration Settlement undermined their position and made them realise that the plantations were not immutable.⁷³ This factor loomed into even greater prominence in 1685 with the prospect of the succession of the catholic James II to the throne.

66 Barnard, op. cit., p.12.

67 P. J. Corish, ,Economic trends, 1660.91', in Moody, Martin, Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland, III, p.401.

68 J. G. Simms, ,The Restoration, 1660-85', in Moody, Martin, Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland, III, p.421.

69 David Dickson New Foundations: Ireland 1660-1800, Dublin 1987, p.5.

70 J.G. Simms, ,The Restoration, 1660-85', in Moody, Martin, Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland, III, p.426.

71 Dickson, op. cit., p.7.

72 J.G. Simms, ,The Restoration, 1660-85', in Moody, Martin, Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland, III, pp 432-3.

73 It has been remarked of the Restoration settlement that it ,left one side dissatisfied and the other insecure [...] the vital thing about the Restoration ,settlement' was its unsettled nature.' See R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600-1972, London 1988, p.138.

So far as Irish catholics were concerned, while Charles II had gone some way to improving their lot they were dissatisfied, feeling that they had been short-changed by yet another Stuart king in whom they had reposed their confidence. Yet James II’s succession to the throne again excited their optimism. For the fourth time during the seventeenth century, catholics in Ireland awaited with anticipation the beginning of a new Stuart reign. This time they were not to be disappointed - not at first at any rate.

Almost as soon as James II ascended the throne in February 1685 developments occurred which set the new catholic monarch on a collision course with his protestant subjects in England and Ireland. Previous Stuart kings had realised that it was impolitic to be overtly pro-catholic. James II, however, did not pursue such a cautious approach, at least not in Ireland. Soon, the island had been transformed from "protestant dominated stability to a dangerously rumour-ridden condition in which protestants universally were scared and catholics at all social levels touched by euphoric expectation and political excitement".⁷⁴

A "Catholicization" policy was implemented in Ireland by the King's confident, Richard Talbot, later earl of Tyrconnell. Before long, catholics dominated the Irish army, eventually comprising 90 per cent of its complement.⁷⁵ They also gained major posts in the civil administration of the country at" the expense of protestants. More importantly, legislation was considered in a parliament convened in 1689 which would at least partly reverse some of the earlier plantation schemes, again, particularly in favour of the Old English.⁷⁶ Naturally, these developments greatly alarmed Irish protestants. But they were by no means the only ones disturbed by James II’s policies. England, after all, was a predominantly protestant country and many resented the catholic succession to the throne. For a time, they could content themselves with the fact that the monarchy would revert to a protestant when James's daughter, Mary, wife of Prince William of Orange, succeeded to the throne. This situation dramatically altered in 1688 when a son was born to the King, a catholic male heir. Before long, Prince William's intervention was sought by James II’s protestant opponents to dethrone him. William was subsequently declared king of England.

When a mainly Dutch force of 14,000 men arrived in Devon in November 1688, James, lacking substantial support in England, fled to exile in France. Encouraged by the French king and supplied with French help, James looked to the catholics of Ireland for support in defeating William. What followed were "the largest formal military operations ever to occur on Irish soil".⁷⁷ Recent historiography has supplanted the traditional depiction of the war in Ireland as a bi-partisan conflict between King James and King William with a tripartite explanation instead. The war in Ireland is now firmly set in its European context as "the war of the three kings" involving King William, Louis XIV of France and his client, James II. The central theatre of the war was in Europe where William and Louis XIV had long been engaged in a bitter struggle. The conflict in Ireland, 1689-91, was but a side-show to the main event. The European dimension to the war was manifested by the fact that William's army in Ireland included Huguenots, Danes, English, Germans, Dutch, Scots as well as Irish protestants, while the Jacobite forces, supporters of James, comprised contingents of French, Germans, Walloons and Irish.⁷⁸

The protestant settlers of Ulster hesitated at first about which side to join. James II, after all, was their lawful king.⁷⁹ The mental scar etched on the protestant psyche by the 1641 mas-

74 Dickson, op. cit., p.22.

75 Ibid., p.26.

76 J. G. Simms, War and politics in Ireland 1649-1730, London 1986, p.73.

77 Dickson, op. cit., p,29.

78 Hiram Murtagh, ,The war in Ireland, 1689-91' in W. A. Maguire (ed.), Kings in conflict - The

Revolutionary War in Ireland and its aftermath 1689-1750, Belfast 1990, pp 61-91.

79 David Dickson, op. cit., p.23.