CausesEdit The roots of the 1641 rebellion lay in the failure of the English State in Ireland to assimilate the native Irish elite in the wake of the Elizabethan conquest and plantation of the country. The pre-Elizabethan Irish population is usually divided into the Old (or Gaelic) Irish, and the Old English, or descendants of medieval Norman settlers. These groups were historically antagonistic, with English settled areas such as the Pale around Dublin, south Wexford, and other walled towns being fortified against the rural Gaelic clans.[1] By the seventeenth century, the cultural divide between these groups, especially at elite social levels, was declining. Many English lords not only spoke theIrish language, but extensively patronised Irish poetry and music, and have been described as Hiberniores Hibernis ipsis (More Irish than the Irish themselves). Intermarriage was also common. Moreover, in the wake of the Elizabethan conquest, the native population became defined by their shared religion, Roman Catholicism, in distinction to the new Church of England and Church of Scotland of settlers, and the officially Protestant (Church of Ireland) English administration in Ireland. During the decades between the end of the Elizabethan wars of re-conquest in 1603 and the outbreak of rebellion in 1641, the political position of the wealthier landed Irish Catholics was increasingly threatened by the English government of Ireland.[2] Plantations The 16th and early 17th century English conquest of Ireland was marked by large scale Plantations/Colonization, notably in Ulster and Munster. These were mass dispossessions of Irish landowners who had rebelled against the crown, and sometimes their workers, and the granting of their land to colonists from England and Scotland. The terms of the Plantation, particularly in Ulster, were very harsh on the native population, who were forbidden from owning or renting land in planted areas and also from working there on land owned by settlers. The main effect of this was the dispossession of formerly powerful Irish clan leaders, such as theONeills and the ODonnells, who fled the country in the Flight of the Earls in 1607. Other Catholic lords, such as theMagennis clan in County Down, sold much of their land to new settlers by the 1630s. Many of the exiles (notably Owen Roe ONeill) found service as mercenaries in the Catholic armies of Spain and France. They formed a small émigré Irish community, militantly hostile to the English-run and Protestant state in Ireland, but restrained by the generally good relations between England and Spain and France after 1604. In Ireland itself, though the resentment caused by the plantations was one of the principal causes for the outbreak and spread of the rebellion. In 1641 60% of land still belonged to Catholics.[3] Religion Most of the Irish Catholic upper classes were not ideologically opposed to the sovereignty of Charles I over Ireland, but wanted to be full subjects of the triple monarchy (England, Scotland, and Ireland) and maintain their pre-eminent position in Irish society. This was prevented by two factors, firstly their religious dissidence, and secondly the threat posed to them by the extension of the Plantations. The failedGunpowder Plot of 1605 curtailed the rights of wealthy Irish Catholics, and unfairly so as they had not been involved. Anglicanism was the only approved form of worship of the Three Kingdoms. Non-attendance at Protestant church services was punishable by recusant fines and the public practice of unapproved faiths by arrest. Catholics could not hold senior offices of state, or serve above a certain rank in the army. The Irish privy council was dominated by English Protestants. The constituencies of the Irish House of Commons were increased, giving Protestants a majority of 108–102 in it, from the session of 1613. The Irish House of Lords still had a considerable Catholic majority that enabled it to block most, but not all, unwelcome draft legislation. Moreover, the Irish Parliaments legislation had to be approved by the English Parliament under a 15th-centuryordinance known as Poynings Law. The Protestant (and therefore settler) dominated administration took opportunities to confiscate more land from longstanding landowners.[4] In response, the Irish Catholic upper classes sought what were called The Graces, and appealed directly to the King, first James I and then Charles I, for full rights as subjects and toleration of their religion. On several occasions, the Monarchs appeared to have reached an agreement with them, granting their demands in return for raising taxes. Irish Catholics were disappointed when, on paying the increased levies after 1630, Charles postponed the implementation of their last two demands until mid-1641.[5] In the late 1630s Thomas Wentworth, theLord Deputy of Ireland, proposed a new round of plantations,[6] though these had not been implemented by 1641. On the pretext of checking of land titles to raise revenue, Wentworth confiscated and was going to plant lands inRoscommon and Sligo and was planning further plantations in Galwayand Kilkenny directed mainly at the Old English families.[7] In the judgement of historian Padraig Lenihan, It is likely that he [Wentworth] would have eventually encountered armed resistance from Catholic landowners if he had pursued these policies further.[8]However, the actual rebellion followed the destabilisation of English and Scottish politics and the weakened position of the king in 1640. Wentworth was executed in London in May 1641. Conspiracy In 1638 to 1640 Scotland rose in a revolt known as the Bishops Wars against Charles Is attempt to impose Church of England prayers there, believing them to be too close to Catholicism. The Kings attempts to put down the rebellion failed when the English Long Parliament, which had similar religious concerns to the Scots, refused to vote for new taxes to pay for raising an army. Charles therefore started negotiations with Irish Catholic gentry to recruit an Irish army to put down the rebellion in Scotland, in return for the concession of Irish Catholics longstanding requests for religious toleration and land security. This army was slowly mobilised at Carrickfergus opposite the Scottish coast but was then disbanded in mid-1641. To the Scots and the English Parliaments, this appeared to confirm that Charles was a tyrant, who wanted to impose Catholicism on his kingdoms, and to govern again without reference to his Parliaments as he had done in 1628–1640. During the early part of 1641, some Scots andParliamentarians even proposed invading Ireland and subduing organised Catholicism there, to ensure that no royalist Irish Catholic army would land in England or Scotland.[9] Frightened by this, and wanting to seize the opportunity, a small group of Irish Catholic landowners conceived a plan to take Dublin Castle and to control other important towns around the country in a quick coup in the name of the King, both to forestall a possible invasion and to force him to concede the Catholics demands. Also, Charles failure to defeat the Scots and the pressure he and his ministers were under from the Short and Long English parliaments in 1640–41 made him appear weak and made it seem much more likely that a rebellion would be successful. Economics Unfavorable economic conditions also contributed to the outbreak of the rebellion. This decline may have been a consequence of the Little Ice Age event of the mid 17th Century. The Irish economy had hit a recession and the harvest of 1641 was poor. Interest rates in the 1630s had been as high as 30% per annum. The leaders of the rebellion like Phelim ONeill and Rory OMoorewere heavily in debt and risked losing their lands to creditors. What was more, the Irish peasantry were hard hit by the bad harvest and were faced with rising rents. This aggravated their desire to remove the settlers and contributed to the widespread attacks on them at the start of the rebellion.[10][11]
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 03:07:36 +0000
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