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Plantations and Penal Laws leave a shadowy legacy
Conveniently enough, our last programme deliberated, among other things, on how the Flight of the Earls set the scene for the Plantation of Ulster. Remember that the Earls had reluctantly accepted the Treaty of Mellifont, which ended the Nine Years War. They realised of course, that their power and influence was gone and, unable to live with this situation, they chose instead to leave Ireland in 1609 in what became known as the Flight of the Earls. Of course, the Plantation of Ireland had started back in 1556 when Queen Mary planted Laois and Offaly. The Plantation of Munster followed in 1586 in response to the Desmond Rebellion. But it was the Nine Years War with its most famous Battle of Kinsale and the resultant Flight of the Earls, which prompted King James to start the plantation in 1609 that would irrevocably alter the social fabric of one province in particular; the job would be finished by Oliver Cromwell.
Earlier plantation experiments in Laois and Offaly in the 1550’s and in Munster in the 1580’s failed in tilting the balance of power in England’s favour. The plantation of Ulster was much more systematic – a more polished and professional job you might say. For the first time in Irish history Ulster was truly an English province. English forts, English garrisons and English law were now established in that last bastion of freedom. But O’Neill and O’Donnell were independent types – as Aiden Clarke says, “unable to settle down as ordinary landlords where they had lately been independent princes – hence the Flight of the Earls. Ulster was now leaderless and the English rejoiced. Ireland’s chief trouble spot was now defenceless and the English government was keen to implement its plantation – or to put it more bluntly – take the land from the Catholic Irish and give it to the Protestant English and Scots. The bigger the Protestant population the easier it would be to maintain law and order (English style). If the Irish refused to become Protestant, then Protestants would be imported.
Who were the main players in this complex period of Irish history?
• The Gaelic Irish
• The old English
• The new English
• The Royalists
• The Parliamentarians
• The Scots
How did these main players become entrenched in the province of Ulster?
An entirely new society, totally alien to native Irish ways in Ulster and the rest of Ireland, was created. But the planned colonisation did not work perfectly. There were not enough settlers. This meant that while many native Irish were expelled, some were allowed to stay as labourers, tenants, and even, surprisingly, landowners. This resulted in a sprawling network of increasingly embittered and beleaguered Irish Catholics who would always be looking for a chance to strike back.
Notwithstanding, the native Irish remained relatively quiet while the plantation was being established. From the English standpoint, it was a given that these native Irish were disloyal and that their leaders were constantly parlaying with England’s European enemies – and of course this was true. Remember that O’Neill and O’Donnell had been taken seriously as princes on the European stage. This high regard still existed. When the archbishopric of Armagh became vacant in 1625 it garnered international interest as both France and Spain sponsored candidates. The Spanish candidate was successful; significant as Spain was at war with England and was looking for Irish allies.
It was the religious link between Ireland and Europe that was most important – especially the link with Rome, which superseded links with any other Catholic countries. This was especially important at this particular time because these were the years of the counter-reformation – the Catholic Church’s attempt to claw back lost ground to Protestantism. The Vatican ensured that there was a continuous supply of clergy, that religious orders multiplied, and that there would be enough seminaries in Europe to accommodate young Irish men who wished to train for the priesthood. Part of this activity was consolidating the position of the church in Ireland. The following developments ensued:
But as always there was a fly in the ointment – the ‘Old English’. They no longer controlled the government in Ireland, but they still owned one-third of the land; they were loyal to the crown, but they were Catholic. They did not want their Catholicism to mark them as disloyal and lose them their lands. As it happens, England did not trust them anyway. But when Charles l came to the throne in 1625, he needed lots of money to fund his war against Spain and he turned to the ‘Old English’. In return for large sums of money, the ‘Graces’ granted concession to the ‘Old English’ in Ireland (1628) giving them, temporarily at any rate, the security they so desperately wanted. But when the war between England and Spain ended, and the money was spent; the promise of special consideration was broken and the ‘Graces’ were repudiated. The ‘Old English’ in Ireland had been used in a most Machiavellian way.
In 1633 a new lord deputy, Wentworth, arrived in Ireland, tasked with making the country self-supporting. A bit of an old school Dominic Cummings, within six years he set up a robust administration which stepped on all opposition. By 1634 the ‘Old English’ no longer controlled parliament so they could no longer prevent anti-Catholic legislation. Clever manipulation by Wentworth ensured that the Protestants were now in the majority. The parliament that had once protected their interests was now being used as a weapon against them.
England was having its own troubles and Wentworth was needed back home. As a result of religious disagreements between Charles l and the Presbyterians in Scotland a war ensued in which the Scots were victorious. When Charles asked the English parliament for help it used his weakened position to demand reforms that diluted his power.
The ‘Old English’, the Ulster planters and other Protestants throughout Ireland joined forces in parliament to destroy the system of government that Wentworth had created. They (wrongly, as it happens) accused him of harming the Irish economy, and enthusiastically cooperated with the English parliament to bring an act of treason against him. They succeeded, and Wentworth was executed in 1641. The ‘Old English’ also got Charles to reinstate the ‘Graces’ and to abandon the idea of planting Connaught. Always nervous of their position, they also tried to persuade Charles to allow the Irish parliament to be more independent.
The ‘Old English’ were determined to firmly establish their right to use the Irish parliament to protect their precarious position as Catholics. They tried to persuade Charles to give them more independence, but he procrastinated because he had already given away too much power in the English parliament. But while some powerful Catholics in Ireland tried to take advantage of Charles’ difficulties, others (perhaps more astutely) realised that his weakness would prove disadvantageous to them – the English parliament was after all staunchly Protestant, as were its allies the Scots. If they ended up taking a hand in Irish affairs it was more than likely that they would supress Catholic worship and expand the plantation.
This fear prompted some Irish in Ulster to consider an armed uprising in 1641. Their property and social position had been taken from them – they wanted to take advantage of divisions in the English camp to take back what was rightly theirs. The plan was to seize Dublin Castle and capture government leaders while simultaneously taking over the chief strongholds in Ulster. Unfortunately, they never got the chance to carry out their plans because a drunken indiscretion uncovered their plans. The key men were captured, and Dublin Castle was not seized. But local risings went ahead according to plan in Ulster under the leadership of Sir Phelim O’Neill. O’Neill and his followers denied they were rebels. They said they had taken up arms to defend themselves and to protect Charles l from the English parliament. O’Neill actually forged instructions from Charles urging the Ulstermen to revolt in his defence. This is a brief chronology of what ensued:
But then things took a turn for the worst in Ireland when the English civil war ended with the execution of Charles l in 1649. Charles was no saint; more of a despot really, but there was always an underlying fear in Protestant England of his Roman Catholic sympathies, and the book of evidence recording his Roman Catholic affiliations would become more damning over the years. To begin with, his wife was the Catholic Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France; an unpopular match. By 1642, Charles was increasingly feeling the cold shoulder as people started declaring either for parliament or for king. The division was set to launch the English Civil War; desperate for allies Charles sent Henrietta Maria to the Continent to enlist Catholic support for his cause against parliament.
As we know, Charles eventually lost his well-coiffured head, which was replaced by the much more practical Cromwellian one. Soon after the gory deed, Cromwell and his New Model Army turned their gaze on Ireland. They were determined to punish the perpetrators of the massacre of the Protestant planters in Ulster, and to silence any remaining loyalist supporters of Charles in the country. Within ten months, Ireland was subdued and defeated. The next Plantation kicked off with the Act of Settlement, which infamously ordered all those whose lands were confiscated to go “to Hell or to Connaught.” It was this Cromwellian Plantation above all others that altered the fabric of Irish society, but not for the ordinary people who continued being servants and tenants. The big change was that the Old Irish families like the O’Neill’s and the O’Donnell’s, and the Old English families like the Butlers and the Fitzgerald’s, were replaced by the fledging Protestant Ascendancy whose power would accelerate and who would control the reins of power in Ireland for the best part of the next two hundred and fifty years.
Aidan Clarke explains the new landscape: “What was changed was the people who owned the land, not the people who lived and worked upon it. The Cromwellian settlement was not so much a plantation, as a transference of the sources of wealth and power from Catholics to Protestants. What it created was not a Protestant community, but a Protestant upper class.”
As Lord Protector of England, Oliver Cromwell was pretty much a military dictator. But shortly after his death his Protectorate collapsed and Charles I’s son, Charles II, was invited to return to England as king in what was known as the Restoration of the Monarchy. Remember that many Catholics in Ireland had fought for the royalist cause and many of them followed Charles II into exile. With the Restoration, these royalist Catholics hoped it was payback time – a return to the toleration of their faith and recovery of their lands. While Charles was sympathetic to their requests, his problem was that he had been recalled by Cromwell’s failed Protectorate, and part of the deal was that Cromwell’s planters in Ireland would be left in place. And now it’s all beginning to sound a bit like Brexit. Charles ended up making promises to both parties. He told Cromwellian soldiers that they could keep the land they had been given; he told the Catholics that their land would be returned to them. This situation was of course impossible. While Catholic landowners were better off than they had been under Cromwell they still only recovered a fraction of their original estates. In 1641 they owned about three-fifths of the land; at the end of the Restoration, they owned little more than one-fifth. By 1685 the population of Ireland had risen to two million – three-quarters of them Catholic, and most of these Catholics were not happy. Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Ormond, saw the difficulty, “there must be new discoveries made of a new Ireland, for the old one will not serve to satisfy these engagements.”
As well as owning most of the land, Protestants dominated administration and commerce. But there remained a nucleus of Catholic nobility who could form the basis for a Catholic revival if the chance presented itself; it did in 1685 when Charles II died and was succeeded by his Catholic brother James II. Once again, Catholics hoped to regain their lands and recognition of their religion. But the power of Protestantism in Ireland was an essential prop to English rule hence, despite his Catholicism, it was not in the interests of James II to change this situation, and moreover, he assured the Protestants in Ireland of this. The cold practicalities of geopolitics had cancelled out the more esoteric theological differences.
One powerful Catholic and long-time associate of James II was Richard Talbot, who would become the first Catholic Viceroy of Ireland in over one hundred years. Now, more and more legal and administrative positions began to be awarded to Catholics. While the Protestant Church of Ireland remained the established church, fewer and fewer Catholics continued to pay dues to Protestant ministers. Now the Catholics grew stronger in their demands to have their lands returned; things seemed to be swinging back in their favour. Talbot was planning to make the Irish parliament predominantly Catholic.
In England, James II was favouring more and more Catholics much to the consternation of the Protestants. In 1688, seven English notables invited William of Orange (husband of James’ Protestant daughter) to invade England and overthrow his father in law. James II ran scared and took refuge with Louis XIV of France; not the worst location for a refugee. With his supportive king now fled, Talbot held out in Ireland hoping that he would get enough support to face down William of Orange. In March 1689, scorned father in law, James II, landed in Kinsale with French money and arms. Let’s be clear about one thing; James had no intention of weakening his hold on Ireland – he was merely using it as a stepping stone to recover his throne in England. The ever-hopeful Catholic Irish nobility naively saw James as the power who would return to them their land and recognition of their religion; they hoped in vain.
James summoned the Irish parliament in order to declare its independence from the English parliament. Supporters of William of Orange (Williamites) had their property confiscated. Once again, the ‘Old English’ had what they wanted. Interestingly, according to historian, J. G. Simms, if James II had won the upcoming war, a Protestant oligarchy would have been replaced by a Catholic oligarchy, but the English conquest would not have been undone and Gaelic rule would not have been restored. Indeed, James II insisted on maintaining Poyning’s Law [whereby the Irish parliament could not meet without permission from England] to retain Ireland’s subordination to the English crown.
The war that did ensue was called “Cogadh an Dá Rí,” or ‘War of the Two Kings’, the two kings being James and William (or Rí Séamus agus Rí Liam) if you prefer. Both kings expanded their ranks with international armies. Surprisingly, from a modern perspective, the Holy Roman Emperor, who at that time was Joseph I, King of Germany, and the Catholic King Charles ll of Spain, supported William of Orange. The Pope was no friend of King James’ supporter, Louis XIV of France. But from the home perspective, the war was interpreted as a struggle between Protestant and Catholic. The conflict began with the armed resistance of Ulster colonists. Most famously, the siege of Derry was broken after three months. King James failed to conquer Ulster, was forced to retreat, and of course, Schomberg’s Williamite army landed.
In 1690, France sent 7,000 troops to Ireland, but bizarrely asked for 7,000 Irish troops to go to France in return. William of Orange came to Ireland and met James II at that defining Battle of the Boyne. James with his 25,000 Irish and French troops faced William’s 36,000 Dutch, Danish, German, Huguenot and British troops. By the end of the day James had fled, his army in full retreat, and William was the winner. In truth, Irish losses were small, but the victory was reported all over Europe. Dublin and Eastern Ireland fell to William while the Jacobites (supporters of King James) retreated to the Shannon.
While William of Orange and Talbot were happy to cease hostilities, Irish leader, Patrick Sarsfield determined to hold out in Limerick. The final big battle of “Cogadh an Dá Rí” took place at Aughrim and proved disastrous for the Irish, and Galway city came to terms with Dutch General Ginkel. The Irish holding out in Limerick knew they had little chance of success and discussed among themselves what bargain they might strike with Ginkel. French officers urged the Irish to hold out for as long as possible in anticipation of French reinforcements. But the Irish were disillusioned with Louis XIV whose help fell far short of expectations. Sarsfield made terms with Ginkel and the Treaty of Limerick was signed on October 3rd, 1691. As many Irish soldiers who wanted to, were given the opportunity to go to France; Sarsfield and 14,000 others took up the offer; the threat of them returning with a French invasion force would never materialise. Catholics were given the rights of worship they had enjoyed under Charles II.
The Treaty of Limerick came just in time for King William, who badly needed to move his troops to Flanders where he was being harried by the French. But Protestants in Ireland thought that the terms of the Treaty of Limerick were too generous to Catholics, even though the Catholic share of the land was now reduced to about one-seventh. With the Irish parliament now entirely Protestant, the next century would see Catholics subjected to the Penal Laws, and the rise of the Protestant ascendancy.
The established Church of Ireland was now entrenched in its position as the religion of privilege and power. Once again, Catholics and Protestant non-conformists were second-class citizens and had to pay tithes to the established church. But there was worse to come – a comprehensive series of new anti-Catholic measures were passed to maintain the status quo in favour of the fledgling Protestant ascendancy and to rubberstamp the continued subjection of Catholics and non-conformists. The Irish parliament passed the “popery code.” These laws for the suppression of popery were commonly known as the Penal Laws.
It is true that minority Protestant sects in other European countries, like for example the Huguenots in France, were persecuted, and indeed, this was used as a lame excuse to put manners on the Catholics in Ireland, but the noted difference in Ireland was that the persecuted sect was in the majority.
While ostensibly the aim of the anti-Catholic or Penal laws was to eradicate Catholicism in Ireland, the laws against religious worship were largely ignored from 1716 because they were logistically impossible to enforce. The laws that were enforced were the ones that were easy to enforce. These were the ones that banned Catholics from parliament, from holding any government office, from entering the legal profession and from holding commissions in the army or navy. For Catholics, it all came down to taking the oath if they wanted to enter any of these positions.
Here is the wording of the oath that prospective Catholic office holders had to take in public:
I do solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of God, profess, testify and declare, that I do believe, that in the sacrament of the lord’s supper there is not any transubstantiation of the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, at or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever: and that the invocation, or adoration of the Virgin Mary, or any other saint, and the sacrifice of the mass, as they are now used in the church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous…
With all these restrictions then, what were the economics of being a Catholic? If, as a Catholic, you felt unable to take this oath, there was nothing to stop you becoming commercially successful with a shop or a factory. While Catholics still owned about 14% of the land at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a number of things happened to reduce this considerably, so that by 1778 Catholic land ownership was at about 5%. Laws were passed between 1704 and 1709 forbidding Catholics to buy land or to take out leases for longer than 31 years, and many Catholic landowners went over to the established church. To put it in monetary terms, by the end of the century, the combined earnings of Catholic landowners were £60,000 per annum out of a total earning realisation of £4,000,000.
Another crucial and frankly fascinating point to remember is that most of the Protestants holding influential positions in Ireland did not want a mass conversion of the Irish peasantry to the established church. This made sense because if privilege came with Protestantism, then it would be diluted in a bigger pool. Hence, proselytizing remained off the agenda to ensure that the privileged circle remained small. Protestant non-conformists were granted legal toleration in 1719, but they still had to pay tithes and were excluded from official offices. Unlike the Catholics though, their property rights were not restricted; they were allowed to carry arms, vote in elections and sit in parliament.
Religious tradition and observance was a up and down affair. Following the Banishment Act of 1697, hundreds of bishops and regular clergy left Ireland, threatened with death for high treason if they returned. Notwithstanding, about one thousand diocesan priests were allowed to remain, and despite the laws on the statute book, they proceeded to reorganise and reform the church so that by the 1750s the hierarchy was restored to its full strength for the first time since the Reformation.
Outside of Ulster, where it was difficult to obtain sites from Protestant landlords, most towns and cities had their Catholic chapels, and new ones were being built all the time. Only established church places of worship could be called “churches.” All old churches, monasteries and cathedrals which had escaped the destruction of the Reformation, had become the property of the established church, Christchurch Cathedral and St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin being two obvious examples. Of course, it wasn’t all complacent tolerance; priests and bishops were always under suspicion, especially during periods of war between England and France – when they might have to go into temporary hiding.
By 1725 new Catholic chapels were being built in the lanes and back streets of Dublin along the River Liffey; popular examples include St Nicholas of Myra on Francis Street, St Audeon’s on Cook Street, Adam & Eve’s on Merchant’s Quay and the Augustinians on John’s Lane. Many rural parishes were so large and scattered that masses were said in private houses, at mass rocks in open fields, or even in the ruins of old abbeys or monasteries. The general modus operandi of the Catholic clergy was one of keeping within the law, keeping their heads down, and not drawing attention to themselves or their flock. But Catholic priests also had miscreants in the ranks – some priests denounced bishops to the civil authorities, and some converted to the established church. One ballad from the Penal Law period is about a priest who became a Protestant clergyman in Donegal in 1739:
Bad luck to you, Father O’Donnell
And wicked the road that you are going now
Last Sunday you read out the holy mass
But on Monday you turned a minister.
What would be the shape of things to come then? From about 1750 onwards, Catholic spokespersons began to emerge. A combination of middleclass professionals and the remnants of the old Catholic aristocracy, they accepted English rule and were not looking for an independent Gaelic state. They reassured crown and parliament of their loyalty. All they wanted was the restoration of at least some of their rights.
During the Seven Years War (1756-1763) when England was at loggerheads with the Catholic coalition of Austria, France and Spain, it was postulated that an Irish Catholic regiment might join forces with England’s ally, Portugal. Members of the Irish parliament were alarmed at the thought of papists being armed, and they objected vehemently. Unfortunately, these events coincided with violent Whiteboy activities in Munster – driven by grievances they were forbidden to address in the law courts. You might remember from your schooldays that Whiteboys were a secret Irish agrarian organisation which used violent tactics against landlords to defend tenant farmer land rights. It suited the Irish parliament to interpret these activities as a popish plot instigated by the French. So, instead of Catholics being given any slack, the Protestants closed ranks to protect their position.
If the Catholics had been freed of tithes and given more land rights, the course of Irish history might have been different. But the first coercion act of 1765 merely compounded the divisions and started the trend of oath-bound secret societies holding sway over local populations, a trend that never fully went away. According to Maureen Wall, historian of eighteenth-century Ireland, “Coercion served only to encourage in the messes of the rural population a spirit of non-cooperation with the ruling authorities, and a total lack of faith in legal methods and institutions as a means of redressing their wrongs.”
Following the American War of Independence and declaration of war by France on England in 1778, security of empire was at stake and the British government felt that it would be prudent to give the Catholics some rights rather than making them more ardent enemies; remember, it was all about politics and power, not about theological differences. When a bill was introduced in the Irish parliament in 1778 allowing Catholics to take out leases for 999 years, it was massively opposed. But in the end, it was forced through for safety of empire. Those Protestants who had fought so hard not to relax the laws against Catholics believed that this bill would open the floodgates to more demands. They were right, and Catholic emancipation would eventually be granted in 1829.
But what use is Catholic emancipation without all the other inalienable entitlements? Grudgingly granting incontrovertible rights on a piecemeal basis to the majority population to temporarily placate them, or flatly denying self-rule and self-determination, would build up a head of steam over two hundred years. The pressure would increase with each plantation, penal law, failed rebellion, eviction, coercion act or flawed trial. Powerful minority groups wielding power for the weakest and most inexcusable of all reasons – religion – will never thrive or succeed in the long run.
Sometimes it takes centuries; sometimes it takes decades, but invariably, the legacy of these colonialists lingers for too long after their demise; and this we see in the border that separates the six counties of Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement was one of the best events in Irish history, but now, as Brexit looms large, the cracks are reappearing. Plantations and penal laws shaped this island of ours; not Vikings and Normans.
Quotations from historians were taken from their relevant chapters in - The Course of Irish History. Moody, T.W. & Martin, F. X. (Ed.). 1967. Mercier Press.
Plantations and Penal Laws leave a shadowy legacy
Conveniently enough, our last programme deliberated, among other things, on how the Flight of the Earls set the scene for the Plantation of Ulster. Remember that the Earls had reluctantly accepted the Treaty of Mellifont, which ended the Nine Years War. They realised of course, that their power and influence was gone and, unable to live with this situation, they chose instead to leave Ireland in 1609 in what became known as the Flight of the Earls. Of course, the Plantation of Ireland had started back in 1556 when Queen Mary planted Laois and Offaly. The Plantation of Munster followed in 1586 in response to the Desmond Rebellion. But it was the Nine Years War with its most famous Battle of Kinsale and the resultant Flight of the Earls, which prompted King James to start the plantation in 1609 that would irrevocably alter the social fabric of one province in particular; the job would be finished by Oliver Cromwell.
Earlier plantation experiments in Laois and Offaly in the 1550’s and in Munster in the 1580’s failed in tilting the balance of power in England’s favour. The plantation of Ulster was much more systematic – a more polished and professional job you might say. For the first time in Irish history Ulster was truly an English province. English forts, English garrisons and English law were now established in that last bastion of freedom. But O’Neill and O’Donnell were independent types – as Aiden Clarke says, “unable to settle down as ordinary landlords where they had lately been independent princes – hence the Flight of the Earls. Ulster was now leaderless and the English rejoiced. Ireland’s chief trouble spot was now defenceless and the English government was keen to implement its plantation – or to put it more bluntly – take the land from the Catholic Irish and give it to the Protestant English and Scots. The bigger the Protestant population the easier it would be to maintain law and order (English style). If the Irish refused to become Protestant, then Protestants would be imported.
Who were the main players in this complex period of Irish history?
• The Gaelic Irish
• The old English
• The new English
• The Royalists
• The Parliamentarians
• The Scots
How did these main players become entrenched in the province of Ulster?
- Most of the land was confiscated in – Armagh, Cavan, Donegal, Derry, Fermanagh and Tyrone.
- It was then given out in lots of 1,000 – 2,000 acres at a low rent to Protestants on condition that they would only take on Protestant tenants to work the land and build defences to protect settlements.
- How did the new English and Scots settlers change the natural and cultural landscape?
- They levelled the forests and replaced traditional Irish pastoral farming with arable farming
- They built towns and villages of timber framed houses with thatched or slated roofs
- They established markets and local industry
- They built churches and schools
An entirely new society, totally alien to native Irish ways in Ulster and the rest of Ireland, was created. But the planned colonisation did not work perfectly. There were not enough settlers. This meant that while many native Irish were expelled, some were allowed to stay as labourers, tenants, and even, surprisingly, landowners. This resulted in a sprawling network of increasingly embittered and beleaguered Irish Catholics who would always be looking for a chance to strike back.
Notwithstanding, the native Irish remained relatively quiet while the plantation was being established. From the English standpoint, it was a given that these native Irish were disloyal and that their leaders were constantly parlaying with England’s European enemies – and of course this was true. Remember that O’Neill and O’Donnell had been taken seriously as princes on the European stage. This high regard still existed. When the archbishopric of Armagh became vacant in 1625 it garnered international interest as both France and Spain sponsored candidates. The Spanish candidate was successful; significant as Spain was at war with England and was looking for Irish allies.
It was the religious link between Ireland and Europe that was most important – especially the link with Rome, which superseded links with any other Catholic countries. This was especially important at this particular time because these were the years of the counter-reformation – the Catholic Church’s attempt to claw back lost ground to Protestantism. The Vatican ensured that there was a continuous supply of clergy, that religious orders multiplied, and that there would be enough seminaries in Europe to accommodate young Irish men who wished to train for the priesthood. Part of this activity was consolidating the position of the church in Ireland. The following developments ensued:
- Bishops were appointed to long vacant sees
- Franciscans proliferated throughout Ireland
- A steady stream of young Irish men went to study in one of the twenty Irish colleges in Europe with the hope of returning to Ireland as priests
But as always there was a fly in the ointment – the ‘Old English’. They no longer controlled the government in Ireland, but they still owned one-third of the land; they were loyal to the crown, but they were Catholic. They did not want their Catholicism to mark them as disloyal and lose them their lands. As it happens, England did not trust them anyway. But when Charles l came to the throne in 1625, he needed lots of money to fund his war against Spain and he turned to the ‘Old English’. In return for large sums of money, the ‘Graces’ granted concession to the ‘Old English’ in Ireland (1628) giving them, temporarily at any rate, the security they so desperately wanted. But when the war between England and Spain ended, and the money was spent; the promise of special consideration was broken and the ‘Graces’ were repudiated. The ‘Old English’ in Ireland had been used in a most Machiavellian way.
In 1633 a new lord deputy, Wentworth, arrived in Ireland, tasked with making the country self-supporting. A bit of an old school Dominic Cummings, within six years he set up a robust administration which stepped on all opposition. By 1634 the ‘Old English’ no longer controlled parliament so they could no longer prevent anti-Catholic legislation. Clever manipulation by Wentworth ensured that the Protestants were now in the majority. The parliament that had once protected their interests was now being used as a weapon against them.
England was having its own troubles and Wentworth was needed back home. As a result of religious disagreements between Charles l and the Presbyterians in Scotland a war ensued in which the Scots were victorious. When Charles asked the English parliament for help it used his weakened position to demand reforms that diluted his power.
The ‘Old English’, the Ulster planters and other Protestants throughout Ireland joined forces in parliament to destroy the system of government that Wentworth had created. They (wrongly, as it happens) accused him of harming the Irish economy, and enthusiastically cooperated with the English parliament to bring an act of treason against him. They succeeded, and Wentworth was executed in 1641. The ‘Old English’ also got Charles to reinstate the ‘Graces’ and to abandon the idea of planting Connaught. Always nervous of their position, they also tried to persuade Charles to allow the Irish parliament to be more independent.
The ‘Old English’ were determined to firmly establish their right to use the Irish parliament to protect their precarious position as Catholics. They tried to persuade Charles to give them more independence, but he procrastinated because he had already given away too much power in the English parliament. But while some powerful Catholics in Ireland tried to take advantage of Charles’ difficulties, others (perhaps more astutely) realised that his weakness would prove disadvantageous to them – the English parliament was after all staunchly Protestant, as were its allies the Scots. If they ended up taking a hand in Irish affairs it was more than likely that they would supress Catholic worship and expand the plantation.
This fear prompted some Irish in Ulster to consider an armed uprising in 1641. Their property and social position had been taken from them – they wanted to take advantage of divisions in the English camp to take back what was rightly theirs. The plan was to seize Dublin Castle and capture government leaders while simultaneously taking over the chief strongholds in Ulster. Unfortunately, they never got the chance to carry out their plans because a drunken indiscretion uncovered their plans. The key men were captured, and Dublin Castle was not seized. But local risings went ahead according to plan in Ulster under the leadership of Sir Phelim O’Neill. O’Neill and his followers denied they were rebels. They said they had taken up arms to defend themselves and to protect Charles l from the English parliament. O’Neill actually forged instructions from Charles urging the Ulstermen to revolt in his defence. This is a brief chronology of what ensued:
- Having taken control on most of Ulster the Irish rebels marched south into Louth and Meath and laid siege to Drogheda where they were joined by the ‘Old English.’ The combined forces called themselves the ‘Catholic Army’ and throughout 1642 they progressed throughout Ireland.
- The English government was determined not to negotiate, but to subdue Ireland once and for all. By April reinforcements from England pushed the ‘Catholic Army’ back into Ulster. The so-called ‘Confederate Catholics’ set up a central war office in Kilkenny and many exiles returned to help. From 1642 onwards, Kilkenny was in effect the capital of that part of Ireland controlled by the Confederate Catholics.
- By this time the Civil War was raging in England. For the next seven years Charles maintained an army in Ireland under the command of the earl of Ormond. He just wanted to sort out the Irish problem so that he could fully concentrate on the civil war in England. So, what happened next?
- The Confederate Catholics were divided. The ‘Old English’ who had the least to gain and the most to lose were prepared to come to terms with Charles. The native Irish, led by returned exiles and papal nuncio Rinuccini, insisted on demanding full recognition of Catholicism and the restoration of all confiscated lands to the Irish.
But then things took a turn for the worst in Ireland when the English civil war ended with the execution of Charles l in 1649. Charles was no saint; more of a despot really, but there was always an underlying fear in Protestant England of his Roman Catholic sympathies, and the book of evidence recording his Roman Catholic affiliations would become more damning over the years. To begin with, his wife was the Catholic Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France; an unpopular match. By 1642, Charles was increasingly feeling the cold shoulder as people started declaring either for parliament or for king. The division was set to launch the English Civil War; desperate for allies Charles sent Henrietta Maria to the Continent to enlist Catholic support for his cause against parliament.
As we know, Charles eventually lost his well-coiffured head, which was replaced by the much more practical Cromwellian one. Soon after the gory deed, Cromwell and his New Model Army turned their gaze on Ireland. They were determined to punish the perpetrators of the massacre of the Protestant planters in Ulster, and to silence any remaining loyalist supporters of Charles in the country. Within ten months, Ireland was subdued and defeated. The next Plantation kicked off with the Act of Settlement, which infamously ordered all those whose lands were confiscated to go “to Hell or to Connaught.” It was this Cromwellian Plantation above all others that altered the fabric of Irish society, but not for the ordinary people who continued being servants and tenants. The big change was that the Old Irish families like the O’Neill’s and the O’Donnell’s, and the Old English families like the Butlers and the Fitzgerald’s, were replaced by the fledging Protestant Ascendancy whose power would accelerate and who would control the reins of power in Ireland for the best part of the next two hundred and fifty years.
- With Cromwell at the helm, the English parliament was now strong, and it turned its attention to Ireland. In 1641, as civil war consumed England, the native Irish took advantage of the distraction to rebel against the planters. Catholic revolts started in Ulster and spread throughout the country. One of the most horrific aspects of this revolt was the massacre of about four thousand Protestant planters. In England though, news of the massacres was hugely inflated with people believing that up to one million Protestants had been massacred. Believing these reports, or perhaps conveniently choosing to believe them, Cromwell, landed in Dublin with a Puritan army seeking revenge as well as conquest. And that conquest was indeed swift and severe – the plights of Drogheda and Wexford being indelibly impressed upon generations of Irish schoolchildren.
- Interestingly, Irish Soldiers were treated leniently enough and allowed to emigrate, and 30,000 did so. As is always the case, the poor were left undisturbed to carry on with their lives of hardship, not so bad perhaps when you consider that it was the wealthy Irish landowners who incurred the wrath of Cromwell. Those landowners found guilty of involvement in the rebellion lost all their estates and property rights, while those landowners who were not involved in the rebellion received a smaller piece of land elsewhere. Ireland was neatly and severely divided in two.
Aidan Clarke explains the new landscape: “What was changed was the people who owned the land, not the people who lived and worked upon it. The Cromwellian settlement was not so much a plantation, as a transference of the sources of wealth and power from Catholics to Protestants. What it created was not a Protestant community, but a Protestant upper class.”
As Lord Protector of England, Oliver Cromwell was pretty much a military dictator. But shortly after his death his Protectorate collapsed and Charles I’s son, Charles II, was invited to return to England as king in what was known as the Restoration of the Monarchy. Remember that many Catholics in Ireland had fought for the royalist cause and many of them followed Charles II into exile. With the Restoration, these royalist Catholics hoped it was payback time – a return to the toleration of their faith and recovery of their lands. While Charles was sympathetic to their requests, his problem was that he had been recalled by Cromwell’s failed Protectorate, and part of the deal was that Cromwell’s planters in Ireland would be left in place. And now it’s all beginning to sound a bit like Brexit. Charles ended up making promises to both parties. He told Cromwellian soldiers that they could keep the land they had been given; he told the Catholics that their land would be returned to them. This situation was of course impossible. While Catholic landowners were better off than they had been under Cromwell they still only recovered a fraction of their original estates. In 1641 they owned about three-fifths of the land; at the end of the Restoration, they owned little more than one-fifth. By 1685 the population of Ireland had risen to two million – three-quarters of them Catholic, and most of these Catholics were not happy. Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Ormond, saw the difficulty, “there must be new discoveries made of a new Ireland, for the old one will not serve to satisfy these engagements.”
As well as owning most of the land, Protestants dominated administration and commerce. But there remained a nucleus of Catholic nobility who could form the basis for a Catholic revival if the chance presented itself; it did in 1685 when Charles II died and was succeeded by his Catholic brother James II. Once again, Catholics hoped to regain their lands and recognition of their religion. But the power of Protestantism in Ireland was an essential prop to English rule hence, despite his Catholicism, it was not in the interests of James II to change this situation, and moreover, he assured the Protestants in Ireland of this. The cold practicalities of geopolitics had cancelled out the more esoteric theological differences.
One powerful Catholic and long-time associate of James II was Richard Talbot, who would become the first Catholic Viceroy of Ireland in over one hundred years. Now, more and more legal and administrative positions began to be awarded to Catholics. While the Protestant Church of Ireland remained the established church, fewer and fewer Catholics continued to pay dues to Protestant ministers. Now the Catholics grew stronger in their demands to have their lands returned; things seemed to be swinging back in their favour. Talbot was planning to make the Irish parliament predominantly Catholic.
In England, James II was favouring more and more Catholics much to the consternation of the Protestants. In 1688, seven English notables invited William of Orange (husband of James’ Protestant daughter) to invade England and overthrow his father in law. James II ran scared and took refuge with Louis XIV of France; not the worst location for a refugee. With his supportive king now fled, Talbot held out in Ireland hoping that he would get enough support to face down William of Orange. In March 1689, scorned father in law, James II, landed in Kinsale with French money and arms. Let’s be clear about one thing; James had no intention of weakening his hold on Ireland – he was merely using it as a stepping stone to recover his throne in England. The ever-hopeful Catholic Irish nobility naively saw James as the power who would return to them their land and recognition of their religion; they hoped in vain.
James summoned the Irish parliament in order to declare its independence from the English parliament. Supporters of William of Orange (Williamites) had their property confiscated. Once again, the ‘Old English’ had what they wanted. Interestingly, according to historian, J. G. Simms, if James II had won the upcoming war, a Protestant oligarchy would have been replaced by a Catholic oligarchy, but the English conquest would not have been undone and Gaelic rule would not have been restored. Indeed, James II insisted on maintaining Poyning’s Law [whereby the Irish parliament could not meet without permission from England] to retain Ireland’s subordination to the English crown.
The war that did ensue was called “Cogadh an Dá Rí,” or ‘War of the Two Kings’, the two kings being James and William (or Rí Séamus agus Rí Liam) if you prefer. Both kings expanded their ranks with international armies. Surprisingly, from a modern perspective, the Holy Roman Emperor, who at that time was Joseph I, King of Germany, and the Catholic King Charles ll of Spain, supported William of Orange. The Pope was no friend of King James’ supporter, Louis XIV of France. But from the home perspective, the war was interpreted as a struggle between Protestant and Catholic. The conflict began with the armed resistance of Ulster colonists. Most famously, the siege of Derry was broken after three months. King James failed to conquer Ulster, was forced to retreat, and of course, Schomberg’s Williamite army landed.
In 1690, France sent 7,000 troops to Ireland, but bizarrely asked for 7,000 Irish troops to go to France in return. William of Orange came to Ireland and met James II at that defining Battle of the Boyne. James with his 25,000 Irish and French troops faced William’s 36,000 Dutch, Danish, German, Huguenot and British troops. By the end of the day James had fled, his army in full retreat, and William was the winner. In truth, Irish losses were small, but the victory was reported all over Europe. Dublin and Eastern Ireland fell to William while the Jacobites (supporters of King James) retreated to the Shannon.
While William of Orange and Talbot were happy to cease hostilities, Irish leader, Patrick Sarsfield determined to hold out in Limerick. The final big battle of “Cogadh an Dá Rí” took place at Aughrim and proved disastrous for the Irish, and Galway city came to terms with Dutch General Ginkel. The Irish holding out in Limerick knew they had little chance of success and discussed among themselves what bargain they might strike with Ginkel. French officers urged the Irish to hold out for as long as possible in anticipation of French reinforcements. But the Irish were disillusioned with Louis XIV whose help fell far short of expectations. Sarsfield made terms with Ginkel and the Treaty of Limerick was signed on October 3rd, 1691. As many Irish soldiers who wanted to, were given the opportunity to go to France; Sarsfield and 14,000 others took up the offer; the threat of them returning with a French invasion force would never materialise. Catholics were given the rights of worship they had enjoyed under Charles II.
The Treaty of Limerick came just in time for King William, who badly needed to move his troops to Flanders where he was being harried by the French. But Protestants in Ireland thought that the terms of the Treaty of Limerick were too generous to Catholics, even though the Catholic share of the land was now reduced to about one-seventh. With the Irish parliament now entirely Protestant, the next century would see Catholics subjected to the Penal Laws, and the rise of the Protestant ascendancy.
The established Church of Ireland was now entrenched in its position as the religion of privilege and power. Once again, Catholics and Protestant non-conformists were second-class citizens and had to pay tithes to the established church. But there was worse to come – a comprehensive series of new anti-Catholic measures were passed to maintain the status quo in favour of the fledgling Protestant ascendancy and to rubberstamp the continued subjection of Catholics and non-conformists. The Irish parliament passed the “popery code.” These laws for the suppression of popery were commonly known as the Penal Laws.
It is true that minority Protestant sects in other European countries, like for example the Huguenots in France, were persecuted, and indeed, this was used as a lame excuse to put manners on the Catholics in Ireland, but the noted difference in Ireland was that the persecuted sect was in the majority.
While ostensibly the aim of the anti-Catholic or Penal laws was to eradicate Catholicism in Ireland, the laws against religious worship were largely ignored from 1716 because they were logistically impossible to enforce. The laws that were enforced were the ones that were easy to enforce. These were the ones that banned Catholics from parliament, from holding any government office, from entering the legal profession and from holding commissions in the army or navy. For Catholics, it all came down to taking the oath if they wanted to enter any of these positions.
Here is the wording of the oath that prospective Catholic office holders had to take in public:
I do solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of God, profess, testify and declare, that I do believe, that in the sacrament of the lord’s supper there is not any transubstantiation of the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, at or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever: and that the invocation, or adoration of the Virgin Mary, or any other saint, and the sacrifice of the mass, as they are now used in the church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous…
With all these restrictions then, what were the economics of being a Catholic? If, as a Catholic, you felt unable to take this oath, there was nothing to stop you becoming commercially successful with a shop or a factory. While Catholics still owned about 14% of the land at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a number of things happened to reduce this considerably, so that by 1778 Catholic land ownership was at about 5%. Laws were passed between 1704 and 1709 forbidding Catholics to buy land or to take out leases for longer than 31 years, and many Catholic landowners went over to the established church. To put it in monetary terms, by the end of the century, the combined earnings of Catholic landowners were £60,000 per annum out of a total earning realisation of £4,000,000.
Another crucial and frankly fascinating point to remember is that most of the Protestants holding influential positions in Ireland did not want a mass conversion of the Irish peasantry to the established church. This made sense because if privilege came with Protestantism, then it would be diluted in a bigger pool. Hence, proselytizing remained off the agenda to ensure that the privileged circle remained small. Protestant non-conformists were granted legal toleration in 1719, but they still had to pay tithes and were excluded from official offices. Unlike the Catholics though, their property rights were not restricted; they were allowed to carry arms, vote in elections and sit in parliament.
Religious tradition and observance was a up and down affair. Following the Banishment Act of 1697, hundreds of bishops and regular clergy left Ireland, threatened with death for high treason if they returned. Notwithstanding, about one thousand diocesan priests were allowed to remain, and despite the laws on the statute book, they proceeded to reorganise and reform the church so that by the 1750s the hierarchy was restored to its full strength for the first time since the Reformation.
Outside of Ulster, where it was difficult to obtain sites from Protestant landlords, most towns and cities had their Catholic chapels, and new ones were being built all the time. Only established church places of worship could be called “churches.” All old churches, monasteries and cathedrals which had escaped the destruction of the Reformation, had become the property of the established church, Christchurch Cathedral and St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin being two obvious examples. Of course, it wasn’t all complacent tolerance; priests and bishops were always under suspicion, especially during periods of war between England and France – when they might have to go into temporary hiding.
By 1725 new Catholic chapels were being built in the lanes and back streets of Dublin along the River Liffey; popular examples include St Nicholas of Myra on Francis Street, St Audeon’s on Cook Street, Adam & Eve’s on Merchant’s Quay and the Augustinians on John’s Lane. Many rural parishes were so large and scattered that masses were said in private houses, at mass rocks in open fields, or even in the ruins of old abbeys or monasteries. The general modus operandi of the Catholic clergy was one of keeping within the law, keeping their heads down, and not drawing attention to themselves or their flock. But Catholic priests also had miscreants in the ranks – some priests denounced bishops to the civil authorities, and some converted to the established church. One ballad from the Penal Law period is about a priest who became a Protestant clergyman in Donegal in 1739:
Bad luck to you, Father O’Donnell
And wicked the road that you are going now
Last Sunday you read out the holy mass
But on Monday you turned a minister.
What would be the shape of things to come then? From about 1750 onwards, Catholic spokespersons began to emerge. A combination of middleclass professionals and the remnants of the old Catholic aristocracy, they accepted English rule and were not looking for an independent Gaelic state. They reassured crown and parliament of their loyalty. All they wanted was the restoration of at least some of their rights.
During the Seven Years War (1756-1763) when England was at loggerheads with the Catholic coalition of Austria, France and Spain, it was postulated that an Irish Catholic regiment might join forces with England’s ally, Portugal. Members of the Irish parliament were alarmed at the thought of papists being armed, and they objected vehemently. Unfortunately, these events coincided with violent Whiteboy activities in Munster – driven by grievances they were forbidden to address in the law courts. You might remember from your schooldays that Whiteboys were a secret Irish agrarian organisation which used violent tactics against landlords to defend tenant farmer land rights. It suited the Irish parliament to interpret these activities as a popish plot instigated by the French. So, instead of Catholics being given any slack, the Protestants closed ranks to protect their position.
If the Catholics had been freed of tithes and given more land rights, the course of Irish history might have been different. But the first coercion act of 1765 merely compounded the divisions and started the trend of oath-bound secret societies holding sway over local populations, a trend that never fully went away. According to Maureen Wall, historian of eighteenth-century Ireland, “Coercion served only to encourage in the messes of the rural population a spirit of non-cooperation with the ruling authorities, and a total lack of faith in legal methods and institutions as a means of redressing their wrongs.”
Following the American War of Independence and declaration of war by France on England in 1778, security of empire was at stake and the British government felt that it would be prudent to give the Catholics some rights rather than making them more ardent enemies; remember, it was all about politics and power, not about theological differences. When a bill was introduced in the Irish parliament in 1778 allowing Catholics to take out leases for 999 years, it was massively opposed. But in the end, it was forced through for safety of empire. Those Protestants who had fought so hard not to relax the laws against Catholics believed that this bill would open the floodgates to more demands. They were right, and Catholic emancipation would eventually be granted in 1829.
But what use is Catholic emancipation without all the other inalienable entitlements? Grudgingly granting incontrovertible rights on a piecemeal basis to the majority population to temporarily placate them, or flatly denying self-rule and self-determination, would build up a head of steam over two hundred years. The pressure would increase with each plantation, penal law, failed rebellion, eviction, coercion act or flawed trial. Powerful minority groups wielding power for the weakest and most inexcusable of all reasons – religion – will never thrive or succeed in the long run.
Sometimes it takes centuries; sometimes it takes decades, but invariably, the legacy of these colonialists lingers for too long after their demise; and this we see in the border that separates the six counties of Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement was one of the best events in Irish history, but now, as Brexit looms large, the cracks are reappearing. Plantations and penal laws shaped this island of ours; not Vikings and Normans.
Quotations from historians were taken from their relevant chapters in - The Course of Irish History. Moody, T.W. & Martin, F. X. (Ed.). 1967. Mercier Press.
