A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes – Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Irish History: Fascinating Snippets of Irish History from the Ice Age to the Peace Process

by Jonathan Bardon

  The province of Ulster had been planted, and some other, not particularly successful, colonisation schemes had been put into effect in the counties of Leitrim, Longford and Wexford. Now Wentworth planned to plant all of the rest of Ireland. He started with the western province of Connacht. He proposed to confiscate all the landed estates owned by Catholics there, give a quarter of each to the king, and return the other three-quarters of each to the owners with a secure title of ownership. On the confiscated portions Wentworth intended to settle families of loyal Protestant English—the Lord Deputy had no liking for Presbyterian Scots. He actually tried to persuade the landowners that they would be better off with just three-quarters of their estates:

  These three parts remaining will after this settlement be better and more valuable to them than the former four parts ... as well in regard of the benefit that they shall have by the plantation as of the security and settlement they shall gain in their estates.

  No doubt this would be because Catholics would have enterprising Protestants living amongst them. Indeed, Wentworth was sure that the example of English neighbours would, in time, lead Old English and Gaelic Irish Catholics to convert to Protestantism.

  The first step was to establish the king’s title to the land of Connacht. Hand-picked grand juries in the counties of Roscommon, Sligo and Mayo duly agreed in July 1635 that the king had title. The jurors of Co. Galway, including Old English Catholics from the city of Galway, refused to bend so easily. For picking an unsympathetic jury, the sheriff was fined the huge sum of £1,000.

  The plantation of Connacht never actually took place. This was mainly because Charles I was getting himself into deeper and hotter water on the other side of the Irish Sea. And, at the same time, his Lord Deputy was alienating just about every interest in Ireland. Wentworth even managed to turn many of his natural allies, the New English, against him. He described them as ‘a company of men the most intent upon their own ends that ever I met with’. Many were greedy men, indeed, but no more than Wentworth himself, who seized or otherwise acquired vast estates for himself. The Lord Deputy fell out with Richard Boyle, the Earl of Cork, who had become perhaps the richest landowner in Ireland. The earl had put up a monument to his late wife in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, and the Lord Deputy thought it too ostentatious. Wentworth made Lord Cork dismantle the monument, stone by stone, and take it away in boxes.

  Wentworth owed his eventual fall, not to the New English, not to the Old English, not to the Gaelic Irish, but to the planters in Ulster and their friends at Westminster.

  Episode 91

  THE EAGLE WING AND THE BLACK OATH

  King Charles I, refusing to rule with the consent of parliament, imposed a whole series of new and unusual taxes on his people. One of these was ‘ship money’, a tax on trade by sea. The burden fell heavily on the merchants and shippers of London, and they resisted payment as best they could. The king was furious, and he soon found his revenge.

  The London Companies had been granted half a million acres in Ulster and had invested great sums in building the city of Londonderry, bringing over British colonists, erecting forts, developing towns, and so on. Charles hounded the London Companies relentlessly until the Court of Star Chamber condemned them to pay a fine of £70,000 and surrender their grant in 1635. The main charge was that the Londoners had failed to clear all the native Irish off their lands. This was true, but then all the planters in Ulster had failed to comply with this condition of their grants. Unlike his father, Charles I had little interest in the plantation of Ulster. His only concern was money. The London Companies had their lands formally confiscated in 1639.

  Thomas Wentworth, the Lord Deputy, ruthlessly enforced the king’s will. Charles aspired to supreme dominance in religious as well as in temporal affairs of state. Wentworth, after denying Catholics the right to public office, now turned on Protestants who did not toe the line. Until now the Church of Ireland had tolerated a wide range of Protestant beliefs and practices. This suited Scots very well: most of those settling in Ulster were Presbyterians who, since they did not yet have their own church here, cheerfully joined the Church of Ireland. And all over Ireland Protestants in this, the Established Church, tended to be Puritans, favouring plain forms of worship and plain dress.

  Wentworth was determined to change all that. Bishops using the High Church pomp, ceremony, chanting and liturgy favoured by the king replaced the ones that Irish Protestants preferred. Henry Leslie, appointed Bishop of Down under Wentworth’s regime, carried out a special visitation of his diocese in 1636. On 10 August he summoned his clergy to a meeting in Belfast. Leslie chose as his text Matthew 18 : 17: ‘But if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.’ Then the bishop castigated those clergymen who had succumbed to Presbyterianism:

  They think by the puff of preaching to blowe downe the goodly orders of our church, as the walls of Jericho were beaten downe with sheepes hornes. Good God! Is this not the sinne of Uzziah, who intruded himselfe into the office of priesthood? ... They have cryed downe the most wholesome orders of the church as popish superstitions.

  Clergy present had the cheek to answer back. They did indeed regard the forms of worship prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer as popish. These clergy who refused to change their tune were then deprived of their parishes.

  The excommunicated ministers sailed away from north Down with about 140 followers to make a new start in America. Their ship, the Eagle Wing, got almost as far as Newfoundland, but was forced by storms to return back across the Atlantic to Scotland. Others had already escaped the wrath of the bishops by taking refuge there.

  Meanwhile King Charles was attempting to impose the Book of Common Prayer on Scotland. There, opposition was led by Robert Blair, former minister of Bangor, and John Livingsone, former minister of Killinchy, both of whom had been excommunicated by Bishop Leslie. Both rallied support for the Covenant, a bond of union among the King’s Scottish opponents.

  Scottish planters in Ulster needed no encouragement to sign the Covenant. Wentworth and Leslie lost no time in taking action against them. The bishop told the Lord Deputy: ‘They do threaten me for my life, but, by the grace of God, all their brags shall never make me faint in doing service to God and the King!’ Wentworth drafted a command that all Scots in Ulster over the age of sixteen, male and female, must take an ‘oath of abjuration of their abominable covenant’.

  The Lord Deputy had raised an army of 3,000 men in Ireland to fight for the king. Half of this force now marched north to Carrickfergus to enforce this oath—better known as the Black Oath. The troops were billeted in the homes of the Ulster Scots, to their great cost.

  The Black Oath had to be taken kneeling, and if it was refused, Bishop Leslie had the power to fine, imprison and excommunicate. For Sir John Clotworthy, an English Puritan with estates in Antrim and Londonderry, this was the last straw. He resolved to go to London, there to rally his friends in the House of Commons to bring about the downfall of Wentworth.

  Episode 92

  PRESBYTERIAN ANGER, CATHOLIC RESENTMENT

  In 1639 Lord Deputy Wentworth sent an army northwards to force the Ulster Scots to take the Black Oath—an oath which denied support for the Scottish Covenant. The Devonshire planter, Sir John Clotworthy, as we have seen, was determined to end this tyranny. He had a seat in the House of Commons at Westminster. He also had powerful friends in the House—indeed, he was related by marriage to John Pym, the leader of the opposition to King Charles I.

  On 7 November 1640 Clotworthy presented a long petition to the Commons on behalf of the Presbyterians and Puritans of Ireland. These people, he began, had ‘translated themselves out of several parts of his Majesties kingdoms of England and Scotland, to promote the infant plantation of Ireland’, only to be oppressed by the king’s ministers and High Church bishops. Very many, he continued, were

  reviled, threatnd, imprisoned, fettered together by threes and foures in iron yoakes, some
in chaines carried up to Dublin, in Starre chamber fined in thousands beyond abilitie, and condemned to perpetuall imprisonment; Divers poore women but two dayes before delivery of children were apprehended, threatnd, and terrified.... They therefore most humbly pray that this unlawfull hierarchicall government with all their appendices may bee utterly extirpate.

  Much affected by Clotworthy’s oratory, the House of Commons seized on the evidence he presented. Here was further ammunition against Thomas Wentworth, now the king’s first minister and ennobled as the Earl of Strafford. On 11 November the House of Commons voted to impeach Wentworth. Sixteen out of the twenty-eight accusations against him related to his tyrannical rule in Ireland. In April 1641 the House of Lords found him guilty of treason, and on 12 May Wentworth was beheaded—‘as he well deserved’, the Earl of Cork noted in his diary.

  Everything now was going wrong for Charles I. His most faithful minister had been executed; his attempts to punish the Scots had failed; his parliament was defying his will; and he was almost bankrupt. Perhaps the large Irish army, mainly made up of Catholics, raised recently by Wentworth, could help? No, it was too late: that army melted slowly away simply because there was no money to pay the men.

  The Gaelic Irish lords closely monitored all these developments across the Irish Sea. Grievances discussed in both the Westminster and Irish parliaments related mainly to the Protestants and the Catholic Old English. Little wonder: only a handful of MPs represented the Gaelic Irish in the Dublin parliament.

  Simply because they were further away from the centre of power in Dublin, the Gaelic Irish had not suffered so severely from religious oppression as the Old English Catholics. Nevertheless, Catholic fervour among them had grown remarkably during the first forty years of the seventeenth century. At a time when the Church of Ireland could not find enough clergy for its parishes, the numbers of Franciscans increased threefold in Ireland between 1623 and 1639. Trained in Spain, Flanders and Rome, these clergy were standard-bearers for the Counter-Reformation, rallying support for the international campaign against the Protestant heretics. One of these was the friar Turlough McCrudden, a native of Tyrone, who had returned from Flanders. A guest of the O’Hagans, he drew enormous crowds to hear his sermons. In the woody fastness of Glenconkeyne

  he told the people ... that he was come from the pope to persuade them not to change their religion, but rather go into rebellion ... and that every year the pope would send unto them holy men, lest they be seduced and reasoned by the English.... Though for a time God punished them by suffering their lands to be given to strangers and heretics, it was a punishment for their sins; and he bade them fast and pray ... for it would not be long before they were restored to their prosperities.

  On the lonely settlements by the Sperrins or Glenveagh the baying of a wolf at the moon must have sent a chill down the spine of many a colonist who had never heard the sound before. The fear of the landless woodkerne lurking in the forests was better founded. The greatest threat, however, was the smouldering resentment of the native Irish who worked and farmed with the settlers. These Gaelic Irish were confronted by planters who spoke another language and who held Protestant beliefs in stark contrast with their own Catholic faith. They knew that their presence on the undertakers’ proportions, the largest planter estates, was illegal. They lived in constant fear that they would be thrown off the land. With no security of tenure, their burdensome rents set by informal arrangements from year to year, and their status severely reduced, the native Irish yearned for a return of the old order.

  It was the political instability across the Irish Sea that offered them a golden opportunity to realise that dream.

  Episode 93

  OCTOBER 1641: THE PLOT THAT FAILED

  Eochaid O’Hussey, the most renowned bard of Fermanagh, mourned the condition of his country, Inisfail, the Island of Destiny:

  Now is Inisfail taken at disadvantage,

  Nurse of the sons of Milesius of Spain;

  Her strength is reft, she is caught unrewarded;

  Denizens of all strange countries flock to her.

  No friend falls now for her sake,

  For her no fight is procured;

  Woe is me for the light in which she is today.

  No utterance is head from her.

  In the reign of Charles I there were few enough Gaelic lords capable of maintaining poets in the old way. Many of these lords were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Ruthless adventurers, such as Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, used English law to seize lands and enrich themselves. The government’s Commission for Defective Titles, by questioning ownership, had drastically reduced the value of estates. And all felt threatened by grandiose schemes for further plantations.

  It was in Ulster that the Gaelic lords felt most insecure. Even those who had been classed as ‘deserving natives’ in the Ulster plantation were in trouble. They found it difficult to manage their estates in the new way required by the crown. Some simply were not used to dealing with money rents from their tenants. Conn O’Neill of Clandeboye, for example, lost everything: he sold his townlands one by one to his Protestant neighbours, and his son Daniel had to live by his wits at court. In Co. Down the Hills and the Trevors acquired lands from the Magennises of Iveagh by lending money they knew could not be paid back and by charging outrageous legal fees. On the other hand, it was hardly the fault of the planters that one Magennis lord bankrupted himself by giving dowries and other gifts to all his thirteen children. Others were simply foolish. The second Earl of Antrim, Randal MacDonnell—who gave his name to Randalstown—lost £2,000 at court during one game of ninepins in 1635. And by 1640 the earl had debts of £39,377; only by mortgaging the entire barony of Cary did he save himself from ruin.

  Sir Phelim O’Neill, Lord of Kinard in south Tyrone, certainly had his financial troubles—he had mortgaged his estates for £13,000. Early in 1641 he was approached by Rory O’More, who had lands in Kildare and Armagh, about the possibility of rebellion. King Charles I had suffered military humiliation at the hands of the Scots and was at loggerheads with his parliament. Surely this was the time to act? Irish officers serving abroad had offered help. During a session of the Irish parliament O’More was able to talk confidentially with the young Conor Maguire, Baron Enniskillen. As Lord Maguire later confessed in court,

  He began to lay down the case that I was in, overwhelmed in debt, the smallness of my now estate, and the greatness of the estate my ancestors had, and how I should be sure to get it again or at least a good part thereof; and, moreover, how the welfare of the Catholic religion, which, he said, the Parliament now in England will suppress, doth depend on it.

  Slowly the plot matured, and on 5 October 1641 the final arrangements were made in Sir Phelim’s brother’s house by Lough Ross. Dublin Castle was to be seized on 23 October, while Sir Phelim O’Neill would lead a simultaneous revolt in Ulster.

  In Dublin on 22 October Lord Maguire disclosed the plot to Owen O’Connolly, employed by Sir John Clotworthy on his lands in Co. Londonderry. Maguire concluded: ‘And whereas you have of long time been a slave to that Puritan Sir John Clotworthy, I hope you shall have as good a man to wait upon you.’ What Maguire did not know was that O’Connolly had become a Protestant convert. O’Connolly joined conspirators at the Lion public house in Winetavern Street to pick up as many details as he could and then leaped over a wall and two fences to bring the news to Lord Justice Parsons on Merchants’ Quay. Parsons only half believed the story, but, just to be sure, put Dublin Castle in a high state of defence. Soon afterwards Lord Maguire and other leading conspirators were seized and imprisoned in the fortress they had planned to capture. The plot had been foiled, but that same night the rebellion in Ulster began.

  Just before eight o’clock on the evening of Friday 22 October Sir Phelim O’Neill called on his neighbour Lady Caulfield at Charlemont and invited himself to dinner. Once inside, Sir Phelim and his men seized the fort and imprisoned the garrison. Then they galloped to Dunga
nnon, which had fallen by the same ruse. Next day at dawn the O’Quinns took Mountjoy and the O’Donnellys seized Castlecaulfield.

  Over the next ten years and more Ireland was to endure the most terrible violence.

  Episode 94

  THE 1641 MASSACRES

  The native Irish of Ulster, led by Sir Phelim O’Neill, rose in furious rebellion on the night of Friday 22 October 1641. Charlemont, Mountjoy, Castlecaulfield, and Dungannon fell to the insurgents within hours of each other. Sir Conn Magennis led a successful assault on Newry at nightfall on Saturday. Lurgan, in flames, capitulated on Sunday, and Lisburn came under siege.

  Lisburn held out. Three times the insurgents were driven back. A herd of four hundred head of cattle driven against the gates failed to batter them down. Belfast, Antrim, Carrickfergus, Larne and Ballygally were thus given time to resist. Meanwhile, in all the rest of Ulster, only the island town of Enniskillen and the walled city of Derry were able to hold out.

  On Sunday 24 October Sir Phelim issued a proclamation from Dungannon, declaring that the rising

  is no ways intended against our Sovereign Lord the King, nor the hurt of any of his subjects, either of the English or Scottish nation, but only for the defence and liberty of our selves and the Irish natives of this kingdom.

  Soon after this, however, Sir Phelim and the other leaders lost complete control of their people. The Irish victories were so rapid in the first few days that the leaders did not know what to do with those who had surrendered. For example, after they had robbed and stripped the settlers in Cavan, the O’Reillys simply released them, ‘turned naked, without respect of age or sex, upon the wild, barren mountains, in the cold air, exposed to all the severity of the winter; from whence in such posture and state they wandered towards Dublin’.