Comments to jjd777@yahoo.com
(c) Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000
Ch. 1. Pre-History: The Coming of the Celts (6000 B.C.-431
A.D.).
Ch. 2. Saint Patrick (432-461) and the Golden Age of Irish Culture (462-800).
Ch. 3. Brian Boru, the Viking Tyranny and the Aftermath (795-1168).
Ch. 4. The Norman Conquest (1169-1269).
Ch. 5. Gaelic Resurgence and Assimilation of the Normans (1270-1484).
Ch. 6. The Tudor Re-Conquest of Ireland (1485-1607).
Ch. 7. Protestant Takeover: 17th Century "Plantations" (1608-91).
Ch. 8. Penal Laws, Ascendancy and "Union" With England (1692-1800).
Ch. 9. The Age of Daniel O'Connell (1801-45).
Ch. 10. An Gorta Mor, a.k.a. Great Hunger, a.k.a. Potato Famine (1845-49).
Ch. 11. Land Reform: Davitt and Parnell (1850-1909).
Ch. 12. The Easter Rising and Independence, But With Partition (1910-32).
Ch. 13. Epilogue (1933-96).
**************************************************
Ch. 1. Pre-History: The Coming of the Celts (6000 B.C.-431 A.D.
Archaeologists believe that the first human settlements in Ireland were made
relatively late in European prehistory, about 6000 B.C.
Ireland's original inhabitants were classic Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic)
hunter-gatherers who used stone implements. Later, about 3000 B.C., they evolved
into classic Bronze Age (Neolithic) people who cultivated crops, raised domestic
animals and (even though metals were extremely rare in Ireland) made weapons,
tools and jewelry out of bronze. At the same time they fine tuned their stone
implements (such as stone axes that were mass produced and traded abroad).
Starting about 2000 B.C., they built the massive stone sanctuaries and tombs
("megaliths") that still dot the countryside. By the 1st Century B.C., Ireland
(as well as Scotland) was under the control of a race called the Picts, a
Neolithic people described in Irish folklore as the "Fir Bolg".
Then came the Celts, and nothing has had a greater impact on Ireland. They
dominated the entire Island until 1170 A.D., and further dominated major parts
of it until 1600 A.D. The first Celts -- probably a small migration -- arrived
in Ireland about 600 B.C., bringing Iron Age skills with them. A major migration
arrived about 350 B.C., and it is certain that the Celts were well established
throughout the island by 150 B.C.
The Celts originated in central Europe, but at an early date expanded into
southern France and northern Spain. They were fair of skin, red-blond of hair,
taller and larger than their contemporaries. Their language was a branch of the
Indo-Germanic languages that also includes German, Latin, Slavonic and Persian.
Eventually, there evolved several dialects of Celtic, including the dialect of
the so-called Q-Celts [a.k.a. C-Celts], which eventually prevailed, and that of
the P-Celts. The Celts were bound together by a common culture and a common
language, but otherwise probably were nothing more than a loose confederation of
largely autonomous tribal units, prone to tribal warfare with one another.
The central European Celts were a formidable military force. They used iron
weapons, and were fierce in battle. They dominated central and western Europe
early in the 1st Century B.C., sacked Rome in 390 B.C., raided Delphi a century
later, and founded the kingdom of Galatia in Asia Minor.
Archaeological evidence indicates the Celts arrived in Ireland in two major
waves: (1) One wave, probably Q-Celts [a.k.a. C-Celts], came directly (by sea)
from the Continent (southern France, and/or northern Spain) to southwestern
Ireland, and (2) The second wave, probably Q-Celts but perhaps P-Celts, traveled
from France and the mouth of the Rhine first to northern Britain, and thereafter
to northeast Ireland. In addition to the major migrations, there would appear to
have been virtually continuous smaller migrations of Celts from the Continent to
Ireland; this would explain how artifacts reflecting the La Tien culture of 5th
Century B.C. Switzerland were present in 2nd Century B.C. Ireland.
The scholarly evidence is reasonably consistent with Irish folklore, which
holds that the three sons of King Mileadh of northern Spain -- namely Heremon,
Heber and Ir, together "the Milesians" after King Mileadh -- invaded Ireland
about the time of Alexander the Great (356-23 B.C.) and vanquished the Tuatha De
Danan, who previously had gained superiority over the Fir Bolg (Picts) and the
Fomorians. Virtually all of the later Gaelic rulers claimed to be descendants of
Heremon or Heber.
These new arrivals in Ireland at some point began to call themselves "Gaels",
a term they limited to inhabitants of Ireland who shared their ethnicity. They
probably never called themselves "Celts", which was the name given to them and
to their language by later scholars, who used the terms to encompass all people
(including Scots and other non-Irish) who shared that culture and language.
Politically, the Celts divided Ireland into four provinces: Leinster,
Munster, Ulster and Connacht. Even before the Celts, the basic units of Irish
society were the tuatha, or petty kingdoms, each of which was quite small,
perhaps 150 tuatha for a population of less than 500,000. This societal
structure perfectly suited the newly arrived Celts, who were predisposed -- by
their ancient culture, presumably, or was it in the genes -- towards relatively
small and autonomous tribal units. Indeed, a recurring theme throughout Irish
history is popular resistance to strong centralized government under a strong
monarch, and insistence instead upon a loose confederation of small and
autonomous units of government.
Although the tuatha were autonomous, the people shared a common language
(Q-Celtic) and religion (Druidism), plus a remarkably uniform rural society --
there were no towns or villages -- which included a variety of social classes,
including the Brehons (judges and lawmakers), Fili (professional poets or
scholars, custodians of oral history) and Druids (priests). The two principal
classes were free and landed nobles, and unfree peasants (slaves, laborers, and
workingmen). Nobles and peasants alike passionately loved their land, and this
evolved into the ancient Brehon law of gravelkind, under which land was the
common property of society, subject to the preferential (but not permanent)
rights of families who worked or lived on it; and although the petit king
nominally "owned" it, he did so only as trustee, i.e., he could not transfer it.
Under another Brehon law, tanistry, during the tenure of any particular king,
his successor was determined, and the selection was made not through
inheritance, but rather by consensus or election from within a group of extended
royal families that included all relations in the male line of descent for four
or five generations.
In about 200 AD, Conn Ced-cathach formed a monarchy in the central parts of
the island (of which the eastern part was called the "middle kingdom"), while
his southern rival, Eoghan Mor, established the kingdom of Munster. Eventually,
the two came to an agreement dividing the island along a line from Dublin to
Galway into a northern part ("Conn's Half") and a southern part ("Mogh's Half"),
a division that lasted until Brian Boru in 1002.
Conn's descendant, Niall of the Nine Hostages (r. 380-405 AD), is generally
regarded as the first Ard Ri (high king) of Ireland, but it is doubtful that his
commands were followed everywhere on the island. Although no one was more
powerful, Niall's position should be compared to that of presiding officer of a
voluntary confederation of petit kings. He ruled from Tara, and claimed to be
descended from Heremon. Late in Niall's lifetime, two of his sons -- Eoghan (who
was the older of the two) and Conall Gulban -- conquered northwest Ulster in
about 400 AD, and founded a new kingdom. Another of Niall's sons, Laeghaire,
succeeded him as Ard Ri, while still other sons established kingdoms elsewhere
on the Island. Niall's descendants, who were called the Ui Neill, continued to
dominate Ireland until the emergence of Brian Boru in 999.
Ch. 2. Saint Patrick (432-461) and the Golden Age of Irish Culture (462-800).
For most of Europe and the British Isles, the period between the sack of Rome
by the Visigoth (410) and the crowning of Charlemagne (800) was the "Dark Ages".
For Ireland, this was the era of Saint Patrick, which evolved seamlessly into
Ireland's Golden Age.
Saint Patrick (c.389-461), the patron of Ireland, was a real person, a bishop
and missionary. He came from England to Ireland to convert the inhabitants to
Christianity -- at the time the only Christian religion was Catholicism -- and
to educate them. He succeeded beyond any rational expectation, as Ireland
eventually became almost exclusively Christian, as well as a center of
scholarship and culture. Even when the Protestant Reformation swept through
Europe and England in the 16th Century, Ireland remained staunchly Catholic,
thereby triggering the Catholic versus Protestant conflict that plagues Northern
Ireland today.
Patrick was born in Roman-occupied Britain. At the age of 16, he was captured
by a party of Irish raiders -- perhaps in one of the many raids on England led
by Niall of the Nine Hostages -- and was brought to Ireland as a slave. During
his captivity he turned to religion. After 6 years of slave labor as a shepherd,
Patrick escaped back to England, determined to convert the Irish to
Christianity. This led him to Gaul, where he studied, was ordained (c.417) to
the diaconate, and spent 15 years in the church of Auxerre. His first nomination
as bishop to the Irish was rejected because of a sin in his youth. On the death
of Palladius -- appointed first bishop of the Irish in 431 by Pope Celestine I
-- Patrick was ordained a bishop (432) and began his mission in Ireland.
Patrick's success in converting the peasants was not surprising -- peasants
everywhere were adopting Christianity -- but his task with the aristocracy was a
daunting one, since much of their power, influence and status was associated
with the prevalent religion, Druidism. The Ard-Ri (high king), for example, was
also the high priest of the Druid religion. Even the brehons, who formulated
law, were threatened by Christianity, which had its own moral law that was
interpreted by Christian priests.
Nevertheless, Patrick was able to make important converts among the royal
families. By 490, 29 years after Patrick's death, the King at Cashel, who ruled
Mogh's Half, was Christian. Eventually, virtually the entire island became
Christian. Patrick conducted his mission from Armagh (which ironically is now
part of Protestant Northern Ireland) and over a period of 30 years, converted
much of the population to Christianity, developed a native clergy, appointed
bishops, established dioceses, held church councils, and fostered the growth of
monasticism. The Christian religion taught by Patrick was and remained entirely
orthodox, except that the populace (and parish priests) from time to time
favored the Brehon law's tolerance for easy divorce and remarriage, instead of
Christianity's strict teaching.
In terms of church organization, Patrick installed the Roman model of
centralized church government, involving territorial dioceses in which parish
priests reported to a bishop who in turn reported to the Pope. As a minor
adjunct to the diocesan churches, Patrick also established monasteries (with
associated schools) that were not directly under the control of the bishop. But
the Roman model of centralized administration never took secure root in the
Irish church, which was simply another manifestation of the Irish people's
historic resistance to any form of large and/or centralized government. Instead,
in the centuries after Patrick, a distinctive Celtic type of church organization
developed which paralleled secular society. Just as the autonomous tuath
remained the basic unit of Gaelic secular society, the autonomous monastery,
together with associated school, became the principal unit of Celtic
Christianity.
Although Patrick personally was an indifferent scholar, he made enormous
contributions to Irish scholarship. Prior to Patrick, the Irish elite were well
educated, but their scholarship was entirely oral; indeed, Gaelic educators were
hostile to the written word on the theory that it impaired memory and
concentration. Patrick, through the monastery schools, introduced the written
word -- albeit in Latin -- thereby permitting an island that had no written
literature eventually to become the land of poets and scholars. By the death of
St. Patrick (461), the Irish elite were a literate and learned people who
doubtless recorded their history in writing, but much of this legacy -- indeed
most of it -- was destroyed in the Viking raids of the 9th and 10th Centuries.
For more than a century after Patrick, the monastery schools and the secular
Gaelic schools co-existed, but eventually, as Christianity overwhelmed Druidism,
the monastery schools likewise prevailed. By the second half of the 6th Century,
scholarship had become inextricably intertwined with religion, and schools of
higher learning invariably were adjuncts of monasteries. The significant
scholars all were monks, who revered knowledge and perceived Christian doctrine
as the most important component of human knowledge. Not all art and literature
involved religious themes, but much of it did. Thus in the monastery schools,
religious art, such as the Ardagh Chalice and the Book of Kells and other
illuminated manuscripts, flourished alongside secular, even pagan, artistic
achievements, such as the Tara Brooch and the great Irish epic "Tain Bo
Cuailgne" ("The Cattle Raid of Cooley").
During the 6th and 7th centuries, Irish monastery-schools were among the most
prominent centers of scholarship in the western world. Students from all over
Europe flocked to them, furnishing a dramatic contrast to the low level of
scholarship in Europe during the Dark Ages. Irish monasteries also dispatched
scholar-missionaries -- called "Exiles for Christ" -- to the rest of Europe.
Saint Columba (521-97), a.k.a. Colmcille a.k.a. "Dove of the Church", the
dominant scholar and poet of his era, founded a monastery on Iona, a small
Gaelic-controlled island off Scotland, where he spent the last 40 years of his
life educating the Scots and converting them to Christianity. And Saint
Columbanus (543-615) founded dozens of monasteries (with adjunct schools) on the
Continent, including his most celebrated institutions at Luxeuil in France and
Bobbio in Italy. By the 9th Century, Irish scholars were among the most
celebrated in the western world. The towering intellect among them was Johann
Scotus "Eriugena", a native Irishman who traveled to France in 845 to became the
preeminent scholar in the Renaissance of Charlemagne, and the chief professor at
the Palace school of the Emperor Charles the Bald. Unfortunately, much of the
tangible work product of the scholar-monks who remained in Ireland -- the
writings and artwork -- was destroyed or carried back to Scandinavia by the
Vikings, whose raids began in 795. Indeed, current knowledge of Ireland's Golden
Age depends in significant part on the work of European scholars, such as the
British historian Bede, plus gold and silver artwork now resting in Danish
museums.
This period, the Dark Ages or Early Middle Ages (410-800), was the era of the
decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the invasions of the barbarians, and the
triumph of Christianity. The Western Empire was broken up into barbarian
kingdoms, until on Christmas Day, 800, the Frankish king, Charlemagne, was
crowned emperor of the West by the pope. His empire had a fundamental weakness,
however, in that it depended on the personal rule of the emperor, who could not
successfully delegate authority or levy direct taxes. By 900 the empire had
broken up into a myriad of duchies, counties, bishoprics, abbacies, and other
lordships whose rulers exercised more power than kings and emperors. At that
same time the frontiers of Western Europe were being devastated from the north
by Vikings, from the south by Muslims, and from the east by Magyars.
Ch. 3. Brian Boru, the Viking Tyranny and the Aftermath (795-1168).
A. The Vikings, Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf (795-1014).
Although Ireland flourished during the European Dark Ages (410-800), it
thereafter suffered its own dark period, the Viking Tyranny (795-1014), when the
infamous Vikings -- those barbarian sailor-warriors from Norway and Denmark --
took to the sea in their magnificent ships, invading and sometimes settling
virtually all parts of the Western World.
They Viking tyranny over Ireland began in 795 when Viking vessels from
Scandinavia* landed on the Gaelic-controlled island of Iona and plundered the
monastery founded by Colmcille. They returned for a further monastery raid in
802 and came again in 806, killing 68 unarmed monks. By the early 800s, the
Vikings were plundering Ireland itself, and doing so on a regular basis. The
Vikings did not regard manuscripts as valuable plunder -- they were illiterate,
after all -- but manuscripts were destroyed nonetheless when the Vikings
routinely burned monasteries, with manuscripts in them, to demonstrate dominion
over the natives.
For the first 40 years, the Vikings were interested only in rape, pillage and
plunder, coming in single ships, or small groups of ships, and quickly departing
with their loot. All of that changed in 831, when Thorgest arrived to subjugate
Ulster, Connacht and Meath. In 837, at least 60 Viking vessels arrived, loaded
with warriors intent on seizing land for settlement. By 841, Vikings had
established small but well fortified settlements in Louth and at a site near
what is now Dublin. The expansion continued aggressively through 873,
particularly in the southeast coastal areas that were most important to the
seafaring Vikings. In 852, Olaf the White and Ivar "Beinlaw" landed in Dublin
Bay and fortified the hill above Dublin; shortly thereafter, Olaf declared
Dublin to be a separate state, and eventually it was developed into a walled
city.
In 914, exactly 100 years before the celebrated Battle of Clontarf, the
Vikings commenced their most ambitious expansion. They captured Waterford and
built a fortress there, then reimposed Viking sovereignty on Dublin. This
triggered a major response from the Ui Neill high king, Niall Glundubh, who in a
rare cooperative effort was able to raise an army from all over the island.
Niall met the Vikings at the Battle of Dublin (919), where the Vikings easily
prevailed, thereby establishing their dominance of the entire island. The
Vikings then established a virtual chain of fortified settlements around the
southern perimeter of the island, including settlements at Dublin, Wexford,
Waterford, Cork and Limerick. In 944, Olaf "Cuaran" ("of the sandals") became
king of the Viking State of Dublin, and shortly thereafter, the Vikings defeated
the Eoganachti, who historically had ruled the southern half of the island. Then
they subjugated all of Munster, including Cashel. Shortly thereafter, they
conquered Meath and imposed a tyranny so severe that the Gaels called it a
"Babylonish captivity". By this time, Vikings were marrying into Gaelic
families.
During this period, Ireland was not alone in its inability to fend off the
Vikings, but other countries were mounting better responses, principally by
using feudal type centralized governments to raise unified armies. But Gaelic
society resisted centralized government and unified armies. In the absence of
unified resistance, the Vikings were able to succeed by attacking one or two
vulnerable Gaelic lords at a time.
Meanwhile, during the entire Viking period (795-1014), the Gaelic lords were
busy fighting among themselves. Generally speaking, the Ui Neill, ruling from
Tara, dominated the northern half of the island ("Conn's Half"), while the
Eoganachti, ruling from Cashel, controlled the south ("Mogh's Half"). The
Leinster lords constituted a third major force. Centuries earlier, the
Leinstermen had lost their land to the Ui Neill and Eoganachti, but they were
constantly plotting to regain their land and power. After centuries of
subordinate status, the Leinstermen, led by Flann Sinna, skewed the balance of
power in 908 at Ballaghmoon, when they defeated and slew Cormac MacCullenan, the
most prestigious priest-king in Eoganachti history. While this did not
significantly empower the Leinstermen, it dealt the Eoganachti Dynasty a
devastating blow from which they never recovered.
Finally, in those darkest days before the dawn, three remarkable men emerged
to liberate Ireland from this Viking tyranny: In the south (Munster), it was the
brothers Mahon and Brian Boru; in the north, it was Malachy. A major
manipulative role was played by Gormflath, daughter of a Leinster king, who
successively married Olaf "Cuaran" (the Viking), then Malachy and finally Brian.
In Munster, it was the decline of the Eoganachti that led to the emergence of
a previously obscure clan, the Dalcassions, headed by two brothers, Mahon
(925-76) [a.k.a. Mathgamain] and Brian Boru (940-1014) [a.k.a. Brian Boruma],
who were the eldest and youngest of 13 siblings. The Dalcassions had been driven
into County Clare about mid-century, and Mahon and Brian were raised during the
worst of the Viking tyranny. When Viking expansion pressed the Dalcassions even
further, Mahon favored a negotiated settlement, but Brian insisted upon armed
resistance. The brothers raised an army that prevailed in a number of small
skirmishes. Then when the Eoghanacti king Donnchad died in 963, Mahon – who had
no hereditary right -- audaciously claimed the throne of Cashel.
By themselves, the Eoganachti lacked the strength to challenge Mahon, so two
Eoganachti princes, Donovan and Maelmaud, joined forces with the Viking Ivar in
an attempt to topple Mahon. At a decisive battle at Sulcoit in 968, however,
Mahon and Brian prevailed. Then almost immediately, they marched on to Limerick,
capturing it back from the Vikings, and forcing Ivar to flee Ireland.
The Battles of Sulcoit and Limerick thus ended the Viking tyranny in Munster,
as well as establishing that the Dalcassions had replaced the Eoganachti as
rulers of the south. Mahon then ruled peacefully for eight years from Cashel. In
976, however, Ivar returned from overseas and with help from Donovan and
Maelmaud slew Mahon. Brian immediately avenged Mahon's death by slaying Ivar.
Brian also sought out Donovan and Maelmaud, and slew them both, thereby
extinguishing any immediate Eoganachti claimants to the throne at Cashel. Brian
then took the throne at Cashel (976) as undisputed king of Mogh's Half.
In the north, meanwhile, there emerged another extraordinary leader, Malachy
(948-1022) [a.k.a. Mael Sechnaill]. A royal son of the Ui Neill, Malachy became
king of Meath at an early age. Then in 980, at the Battle of Tara, he inflicted
a horrendous defeat on the Dublin Vikings, after which he claimed the high
kingship. One year later (981), he marched on Dublin, forced Olaf to surrender
and flee to the monastery in Iona (where he died a year later, after converting
to Christianity), thus ending the "Babylonish captivity" of Meath and the North.
A few years later, Malachy married Olaf's widow, Gormflath. In 994 Malachy
installed Sitric, son of Olaf and Gormflath, as ruler of Dublin.
Brian and Malachy had now established themselves as the dominant forces in
Ireland. The Vikings, after their successive defeats at Sulcoit (968), Limerick
(969), Tara (980) and Dublin (981), remained a factor militarily, but only in
the subordinate role of supporting Malachy. A clash pitting Malachy (and his
Viking supporters) against Brian seemed inevitable, but in 998 the two reached
an agreement under which Brian would be supreme from Dublin south, while Malachy
ruled the northern half.
Then Malachy made an imprudent move. He discarded Gormflath. She promptly
retaliated by persuading her Gaelic brother, Maelmora, to assert his hereditary
claim to the kingship of Leinster, to form an alliance with her son Sitric, lord
of Dublin, and to challenge both Brian and Malachy. The uprising failed,
however. At Glen Mama in 999, Brian's forces easily routed the combined army of
Maelmora and Sitric.
Inexplicably, Brian (now age 59 with two sons from a prior marriage) married
Gormflath, who bore him another son, Donnchad. As a favor to Gormflath, Brian
reinstalled her son, Sitric, to his former position as ruler of Dublin, and her
brother, Maelmora, to his former position as King of Leinster.
By 1002 Brian determined that he finally was in a position to claim the high
kingship of all of Gaelic Ireland. He met Malachy at Tara and issued an
ultimatum: Formally surrender the high kingship to Brian, or meet in open
battle. Malachy was given time to decide, but was unable to garner support from
the northern Ui Neill for a full scale war against Brian. He submitted to Brian
without a battle.
Thus in 1002 Brian Boru became the undisputed Ard Ri of all Gaelic Ireland.
(His sway over Viking areas remained clouded, however.) But Brian was still not
sure that every Gaelic lord recognized his sovereignty. To formalize his power,
Brian instituted a ceremony that later became a ritual among Ard Ri. Brian
traversed the island, particularly the North, forcing acknowledgments of his
sovereignty. He was welcomed with a pomp never before or after equaled, and
indeed his sovereignty was recognized throughout Gaelic Ireland. On his second
expedition in 1005, Brian visited the church founded by Saint Patrick at Armagh,
where he made an offering of 20 ounces of gold, and expressly acknowledged the
ecclesiastical supremacy of the Pope and bishops, thus insuring that his secular
sovereignty would not be challenged by the Church.
As Ard Ri, Brian regarded himself as a Gaelic Charlemagne, thinking in terms
of institutions for the entire island, and launching programs to restore both
the physical infrastructure and scholarly preeminence of the country. He built
bridges and roads, rebuilt ruined churches and founded others. He upgraded
monastery libraries by sending overseas for books to replace those destroyed
during the Viking tyranny. He gave art, literature and culture a new impetus.
Brian's 12 year tenure (1002-14) as Ard Ri is one of high points of Irish
history. At the same time, Brian's actual control over the island was less than
absolute. Without the infrastructure of feudalism or other centralized
government, even Brian could not consolidate the degree of power and control
that was being exercised by the strong feudal monarchs in other parts of Europe.
Now Brian made the same imprudent move as had Malachy. He discarded
Gormflath, who naturally retaliated. Once again, she persuaded Maelmora, her
brother, and Sitric, her son, to join together in an effort to conquer the
island. The plot gained momentum when the Earl of Orkney, Sigurd the Stout, in
return for a promise of Gormflath's hand in marriage, contributed his army of
2,000 Vikings in mail. The combined Leinster-Viking army began the campaign by
threatening Malachy, who quickly requested help from Brian. Brian, realizing
that his tenuous claim of sovereignty over the Viking towns was at stake,
marched on Dublin to confront the upstarts.
At the Battle of Clontarf (April 23, 1014, Good Friday), Brian's forces met
and convincingly defeated the combined Leinster-Viking army. It was a fierce and
pitched battle with terrible casualties on both sides.
Clontarf sometimes is depicted as a glorious Irish victory in which the
Vikings were expelled from Ireland and Brian was confirmed as the first
universally acknowledged high king of the entire island. This interpretation is
highly misleading. In the first place, although Clontarf marked an end to the
Viking tyranny over most parts of the island, it did not totally extinguish
their presence or influence. Brian's army, because of extensive casualties, was
unable to totally expel the Vikings, many of whom returned to their strongholds
in Dublin, Waterford, Wexford and other costal settlements, where they continued
to hold sway until the Norman invasion more than 150 years later.
More importantly, those slain at Clontarf included three generations of
Dalcassion kings and their heirs apparent, namely Brian himself (then age 74),
plus his oldest son Murchad, plus Murchad's young son. Since Brian's younger
sons, Tadg and Donnchad, lacked stature, the high kingship passed to Malachy,
who served well and peacefully until his death in 1022, after which Ireland
slipped back into divided and chaotic government.
As for the Vikings, few visible signs remain today of their 150 year tyranny,
neither architecture, nor artwork, nor holidays, nor pagan gods, nor language,
nor culture. The most that can be said is that they founded Dublin and other
coastal cities (all of which have been totally rebuilt), that a handful of
Viking words remain in the language (including the place names Dublin,
Waterford, Wexford and Cork), and that some Viking blood runs through the veins
of many inhabitants who think of themselves as 100% Gaelic.
END NOTES TO CHAPTER 3A.
*Among Vikings who settled in Ireland, the majority came from Norway, but a
significant minority of them, including those who settled around Limerick, were
from Denmark. The 9th Century Gaels, who had a strong sense of color, used the
term "Finn-gall" (or "fair foreigner") to describe the Norwegians, and
"Dubh-gall" (or "dark foreigner") for the Danes.
B. From Clontarf to the Normans (1015-1168).
Between Clontarf (1014) and the Norman invasion (1169), very little of
historical note occurred within Ireland itself, but in Europe and England, the
ascendancy of the Norman Dynasty cast ominous shadows over Ireland.
In Ireland itself, Brian was succeeded as Ard Ri by Malachy, who reigned for
eight years. But upon Malachy's death in 1022, there was no clear successor, and
Ireland slipped back into divided and chaotic government. There were, of course,
self proclaimed high kings, but none was able to garner universal acknowledgment
of his sovereignty. Between 1022 and 1069, there were eight different Ard Ri
claimants, but each was seriously challenged, leading to a new term, "king with
opposition". Among the eight, two were from the Ui Neill and three from Brian's
line; later, in the 12th Century, MacLochlainn from Leinster, and two O'Connors,
father and son from Connacht, joined the list of claimants to the high kingship.
The Church meanwhile was reforming itself. The Vikings had destroyed
monasteries and had fostered a barbaric way of life that had become the norm
even in Gaelic society. By 1000 A.D. violence was common, the sacraments were
neglected and the ancient brehon law of easy divorce and remarriage was revived.
Then, however, a succession of bishops, among whom Saint Malachy was the most
prominent, worked with the Pope to rebuild the churches, to expunge the barbaric
Viking culture, and even, for the first time in 600 years, to re-institute a
conventional diocesan structure of Church administration. By the Synod of Kells
in 1152, the Irish Church was in closer alignment with Rome than ever before in
Irish history.
The truly important development in this period, however, was the Norman
expansion in Europe and England. The Normans originally were Vikings who in the
9th and 10th Centuries settled in western France, intermarried with the natives,
and established the Duchy of Normandy, where they developed the feudal form of
centralized government and society, and converted to Christianity. Normandy
shortly became Europe's most highly organized, militarily efficient, and
expansion minded state. Normans already had migrated to England when William, a
Norman duke who had a plausible claim to the English Crown, invaded England to
press his claim against the half-Danish Harold II, leader of the Anglo-Saxons.
At the Battle of Hastings (1066), William handily defeated Harold and his
Anglo-Saxon forces. Commonly known as William the Conqueror, he assumed the
English crown as William I in 1066. The Norman Conquest was complete. The
Anglo-Saxon governing class was almost totally destroyed, and its culture
overwhelmed, except that ordinary people continued to speak English. William
moved decisively to install a French speaking military aristocracy to occupy and
rule England in accordance with the classic Norman-feudal model, i.e., a strong
centralized government under a strong feudal monarch.
William the Conqueror died in 1087, and his Last Will and Testament divided
his empire. He bequeathed England to his sons, William II and Henry I. He left
Normandy to his eldest son, Duke Robert II (c.1054-1134); but Normandy was
seized by Henry I in 1106, became part of the Angevin empire, and was not
restored to France until 1206.
The Norman empire expanded quickly and efficiently under William and his
second son William II (r. 1087-1100), his third son Henry I (r. 1100-35) and his
great grandson Henry II. The powerful Norman military caste settled in and
gradually feudalized Scotland. Norman barons also conquered the Welsh border and
much of South Wales.
Henry II (r. 1154-89), the great grandson of William the Conqueror, was even
more expansion minded than his predecessors. He became the Norman ruler of the
vast Angevin empire, which included England, Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Poitou, and
Aquitaine, with sovereign claims over Toulouse, Wales and Scotland. Although
Henry certainly was King of England, he was French rather than English. He was
born in Normandy, reared in France, and spoke Norman French, not English.
As early as 1155, Henry considered an invasion of Ireland. It would appear
that at Henry's request Pope Adrian IV, the only Englishman ever to serve as
Pope, issued a Bull Laudabiliter authorizing Henry to conquer Ireland and to
make himself overlord of Ireland in order to bring the Irish church more into
line with Roman standards. (Some historians have doubted this in light of Church
reforms already completed by the Synod of Kells.) Henry postponed the invasion
of Ireland at that time, but could it be long in coming?
Ch. 4. The Norman Conquest (1169-1270).
The Norman-Anglo Conquest of Ireland began in 1169, when a mercenary invasion
force from Norman-occupied Wales captured Wexford and Waterford. A year later
they took Dublin, and then, over the next eighty or so years, they expanded in
all directions, until they held about 75% of the island.
The mercenaries who invaded Ireland were French in origin: ethnic Normans who
spoke Norman-French, not English. Their king was Henry II, the French speaking,
ethnically Norman ruler of the vast Angevin empire, of which England was only a
small part. They were descended from 10th Century Vikings who conquered western
France and intermarried with the natives, and then, as part of the Norman
military aristocracy which William the Conqueror had installed after the Battle
of Hastings (1066), they had migrated to England and Wales, again intermarrying
with the natives. They had no deep seated cultural roots either in England, or
in Wales, or in France, or in Scandinavia.
Everywhere they went in Ireland, the Normans built castles and towns, as they
had done in England. They also intermarried with Gaelic nobility, establishing
the celebrated Norman-Irish feudal families -- Fitzgerald, Burke, Costello,
Butler -- who ruled much of Ireland under nominal suzerainty from England until
late in the 16th Century. Within a few generations, the Normans were as much a
part of the Irish landscape as were the Gaels.
The story of the Norman Conquest resembles a soap opera, pitting the wily,
deceitful villain (Dermot MacMurrough) against the well meaning but hapless
incompetent (Tiernan O'Rourke). MacMurrough and O'Rourke were mortal enemies.
The antagonism between them dated to 1152, when O'Rourke had been humiliated by
MacMurrough's abduction of O'Rourke's wife, Dervorgilla. But MacMurrough may not
have been as culpable as it seemed. According to Irish folklore, it was
Dervorgilla herself, then aged 44, who arranged the abduction, with MacMurrough,
then aged 42, simply going along. Nevertheless, MacMurrough was hardly an
innocent bystander, having eagerly accepted the invitation, and having staged a
lifelike abduction, with horsemen, screaming victim, and all the trappings.
O'Rourke recovered Dervorgilla the following year (1153), but he never got the
revenge he wanted.
The subsequent hostilities between O'Rourke and MacMurrough were played out
in the context of a larger battle between Rory O'Connor and Murtaugh MacLochlain
for the high kingship of Ireland. O'Rourke was allied with O'Connor, the
eventual winner, while MacMurrough supported, and more importantly was protected
by, MacLochlain.
In 1166, finally, after a 10 year war, O'Connor defeated MacLochlain once and
for all. O'Connor was magnanimous in victory. He reduced MacLochlain's
petit-kingdom to a small area, and took hostages, but otherwise permitted him to
live out his reign.
O'Rourke had no intention of extending similar generosity to MacMurrough. He
got his revenge later that same year when MacLochlain (MacMurrough's long time
protector) died, and O'Rourke, along with several cohorts, forced MacMurrough to
flee Ireland.
But MacMurrough quickly regrouped. He sought help from Henry II, the
aforementioned Norman ruler of the Angevin empire. To Henry, MacMurrough
represented opportunity knocking. Henry had no enthusiasm for personally leading
an expedition to Ireland -- after all, he had previously declined to do so, even
after seeking and receiving the Bull Laudabiliter – but he had nothing to lose
by encouraging MacMurrough. Thus Henry issued an open letter to his subjects,
authorizing them to render military assistance to MacMurrough.
MacMurrough then contacted one of the great Norman leaders in Wales, the
legendary "Strongbow" (a.k.a. Richard FitzGilbert de Clare, the earl of
Strigoil). Initially, Strongbow was reluctant, but then MacMurrough offered
Strongbow his eldest daughter, Aoife (Eva), in marriage, together with the right
to succeed MacMurrough as king of Leinster. Finally, Strongbow agreed to lead an
army into Ireland to restore MacMurrough to power.
With Strongbow on his side, MacMurrough then was also able to recruit a
number of Norman and Flemish knights whose names now are common in Ireland:
FitzHenry, Carew, FitzGerald, Barry, Prendergast, Fleming, Roche, Cheevers,
Synott.
The impatient MacMurrough returned to Ireland with a handful of Normans in
1167, but O'Connor and O'Rourke soon forced him to submit. Always the master of
deceit, MacMurrough even paid O'Rourke one hundred ounces of gold as reparation
for abducting Dervorgilla. But MacMurrough was not discouraged. He knew that
help was on the way.
The first Norman troop ships, about 600 in number, landed at Bannow Bay early
in May 1169. MacMurrough and several hundred of his men promptly joined the
Normans, and together they marched on Wexford. The Viking inhabitants directly
confronted the invaders, expecting to find a rag-tag outfit of enthusiastic but
poorly armed Irishmen. Instead they discovered a fully armed and disciplined
professional army, ready for the kill. The Vikings were driven back into
Wexford, and next day the town was forced to surrender.
Strongbow himself now set sail for Ireland. His advance guard, ten knights
and seventy archers, was led by a magnificent young soldier-warrior from the
FitzGerald family, Raymond Carew, commonly called 'le Gros' ('the Fat'). Le Gros
landed north of Waterford and quickly built earthen ramparts which remain even
today. Almost immediately, an opposition army -- several thousand Vikings and
Gaelic-Irish from Waterford and the surrounding areas -- attacked le Gros and
his contingent of eighty Norman and Fleming soldiers.
Incredibly, le Gros and his vastly outnumbered troops prevailed. Behind the
ramparts, le Gros had concealed a herd of cattle, which he suddenly stampeded
into the oncoming troops, trampling the front rank of the attackers. In all the
confusion, le Gros and his force routed the remaining natives, seventy of whom
were captured alive. As a message to Waterford, the prisoners' limbs were
broken, their heads severed, and their bodies thrown over the cliffs.
Now Strongbow and his army of about two hundred knights and a thousand other
troops joined le Gros, and two days later, they attacked Waterford. Twice the
Normans were beaten off, but eventually le Gros breached the walls at a weak
point, and captured Waterford.
Now MacMurrough's daughter, Aoife, came to Waterford, where she married
Strongbow. A celebrated fresco in the British House of Commons depicts the
wedding ceremony occurring at the close of the battle, against a background of
burning buildings and dead Irishmen. The fresco is a classic example of artistic
license, since Aoife did not arrive until several days after the battle. But the
artist captured brilliantly the essential elements of the pact which MacMurrough
had made with Strongbow two years earlier in Wales.
Strongbow and MacMurrough now set their sights on taking Dublin, which was a
semi-independent Viking kingdom. With the wily MacMurrough leading the way, the
Normans evaded an ambush laid by O'Connor and O'Rourke and arrived unscathed at
the city walls. The Vikings were inclined to surrender, but while negotiations
were still ongoing, le Gros and Milo de Cogan led their troops through a breach
in the city walls and routed the city's ineffectual defenders. Asgall, the
Viking-Irish King of Dublin, managed to escape with some of his Viking
followers. As they sailed away, Asgall vowed to return and retake Dublin.
MacMurrough became deathly ill in April 1171, and while Strongbow was
visiting him, Asgall, who had been forced to flee only nine months earlier, made
good on his vow to return. He brought with him a fleet of ships carrying about a
thousand Vikings, who mounted a fierce assault on Strongbow's Dublin. But even
without Strongbow to lead them, the Normans prevailed. Asgall, who was taken
prisoner, was tried, convicted and beheaded in the hall of what formerly had
been his own palace in Dublin.
Upon MacMurrough's death, Strongbow returned to Dublin, only to be confronted
by a revolt of the Leinster tribes, who were challenging Strongbow's right to
succeed MacMurrough as King of Leinster. The revolt nominally was led by
Murtaugh MacMurrough, Dermot MacMurrough's nephew and heir, who claimed that
succession should be determined by Irish (Brehon) law, not his uncle's agreement
with Strongbow. Significantly, Murtaugh had military support from the Ard Ri,
Rory O'Connor, along with widespread support from the other Gaelic lords. The
Gaelic plan was to lay siege to Dublin and to starve the Normans into surrender.
But after two months, complacency set in, which gave the Normans their
opportunity. Strongbow, le Gros, and Milo de Cogan, each with a contingent of
200 men, snuck out of the city, circled around behind O'Connor, and mounted a
surprise attack. The daring initiative succeeded beyond all expectations,
decimating O'Connor's army and terminating the siege. The victory established
once and for all the Norman's military supremacy over both Viking and Gaelic
Irish.
Nominally, Strongbow and his Norman troops were acting on behalf of Henry II,
but Henry suspected -- with good reason -- that Strongbow planned to establish
an independent kingdom in Ireland. But Henry wanted Ireland to become part of
his Angevin empire, with the Normans serving as feudal underlords. To squelch
any contrary plans Strongbow might have, Henry promptly traveled to Ireland,
bringing with him 4,000 well armed troops as a show of force. The visit was an
enormous success. Without a drop of blood being shed, Strongbow and the other
Norman warriors capitulated and paid homage to Henry, as did virtually everyone
else of importance, the Normans, the Irish, the Vikings, even the bishops.
Ireland was now part of Henry's Angevin empire.
In 1175, the Treaty of Windsor was negotiated under which (1) Henry took for
himself a large portion of Irish land already in Norman hands, including the
area which later became known as "the Pale"; (2) The remaining land already in
Norman hands was allocated among the Norman leaders; and (3) Henry agreed to
accept Rory O'Connor as Ard Ri (high-king) of the unconquered areas, while
O'Connor pledged himself to recognize Henry II as his overlord and to collect
annual tribute for him from all parts of Ireland. But the treaty broke down
almost immediately, for two reasons. First, O'Connor, the Ard Ri, found it
impossible to collect tribute even in his home territory (Connacht), let alone
elsewhere on the island. More important, Henry could not restrain his Norman
barons from seizing more Irish land. Finally, Henry gave up on the treaty, and
personally made several grants of large areas without consulting O'Connor or the
other Gaelic kings.
In 1189, Henry appointed a Lord Protector of Ireland: His favorite son, John
(then age 17), who served ten years and then became King of England
(r.1199-1216).
Henry II died in 1189, and his vast Angevin empire (of which England was only
a small part) quickly began to break apart. Henry II was succeeded by his son,
Richard the Lionheart (r. 1189-99), who was a magnificent warrior, but a
terrible administrator. His glaring blunder was to concede that English monarchs
were simply feudal under-lords to Philip II of France and his successors.
Richard was succeeded by Henry's second son, the much maligned John I (r.
1199-1216), who had been Lord of Ireland since 1190.
Within five years of his coronation, John I found himself on the losing side
of a war with King Philip II of France (1206). As a result of this military
defeat, John lost most of the English possessions in France, including Normandy,
Anjou and Brittany. Disastrous as these losses were, they would have been worse
if they had been allowed to impact England's dominion over Norman-controlled
Ireland. But John succeeded in utilizing military threats and intimidation to
pressure the Norman-Irish lords into aligning themselves with England rather
than France. At the time, England was ruled by a French speaking, ethnically
Norman military aristocracy, although the ordinary citizen spoke English. Later
when English kings reverted to the English tongue, the Norman-Irish lords --
descendants of the original, French speaking Norman invaders -- found themselves
pledging loyalty to the English speaking Kings of England, rather than their
French speaking rivals from France and Normandy.
The coronation of John -- truly a weak monarch -- insured that the remainder
of the Norman Conquest of Ireland would be chaotic, with no master planning from
the Crown. Chaotic or not, by the year 1250 -- only eighty years after their
arrival -- the Normans controlled three quarters of the island.
The Normans, assisted by a partly Anglo work force, dramatically changed the
face of inland Ireland, which previously had been entirely pastoral. Vastly
outnumbered by the natives, the Normans congregated in small communities, which
gradually evolved in towns, typically centered around a castle and/or church.
Indeed, although the coastal towns of Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, and
Limerick were established by the Vikings, the vast majority of inland and other
towns and villages in Ireland were founded by the Normans. Munster, under Norman
influence, became one of the most French of provinces outside of France itself.
After conquering an area, the Normans typically displaced the Gaelic
nobility, or married into it, but the ordinary Irishman was left in peaceful
possession of his land to herd cattle and till the soil, just as he had been
doing under their native chieftains. But the Normans did insist that the natives
adopt modern and more efficient agricultural practices.
Moreover, the Normans customarily built churches in their towns. Virtually
all of the medieval cathedrals in Ireland -- St Patrick's in Dublin, St Mary's
in Limerick, St Canice's in Kilkenny -- were the work of the Normans.
The original Normans imposed a feudal system substantially identical to that
which their ancestors had brought from Normandy to England. They built Dublin
Castle and installed a strong central government. They struck coinage for
Ireland. They introduced English common law, including the jury system. They
appointed Sheriffs. And although it served only the Norman-Anglo colony, an
Irish parliament modeled on the English one was created in the late 13th
century. Although parts of the feudal system of government were rejected by
descendants of the original Normans, other parts survived.
By the mid-1200s, the Normans held about 75% of the island, but their
expansion was on the verge of curtailment. At this point, Ireland was divided
into three geographic, ethnic and cultural regions:
(1) The so-called "Pale" -- Dublin and a surrounding area about 30 miles long
and 20 miles wide -- was the only area which was fully English. The Crown's
writs and orders were followed, some English was spoken, English culture
prevailed, and most of the inhabitants (Philip II later called them the "loyal
English") thought of themselves not as Irishmen but as the Crown's colony in
Ireland.
(2) Gaelic Ireland -- principally western Ulster and an area in the South
along the western coast -- had never been conquered by the Normans, and
naturally retained Gaelic customs and remained completely outside feudal society
and English rule. The Gaelic lords (Philip II later called them the "wild
Irish") thought of themselves as Irish, never as the Crown's colony.
(3) Norman-Irish Ireland, comprising about 70% of the island (everything
except the Pale and Gaelic Ireland), consisted of the quasi-independent fiefs of
the great Norman-Irish lords. In these areas, the Norman-Irish lords --
descendants of the original Norman invaders -- not only resisted the tight
control of a feudal monarchy, but were beginning to adopt the Gaelic language
and culture, and to assimilate into Gaelic society. These Norman-Irish lords
(Philip II later called them the "English rebels") remained fundamentally loyal
to the Crown, but had no interest in becoming part of a feudal monarchy that
would strip them of power.
Ch. 5. Gaelic Resurgence and Assimilation of the Normans (1270-1484).
Beginning in the mid-1200s, there began an amazing "Gaelic Resurgence" -- and
Norman retreat -- that reversed and overwhelmed Norman advances in three
separate areas: (1) military dominance, (2) culture, and (3) government. Thus by
the mid-1400s, (1) the Gaelic lords had taken back over half of their lost
territory, so that Norman-held land (including the "Pale"), once 75% of the
island, was reduced to about 35%; (2) the Normans had adopted the Gaelic
language, dress and culture, becoming so assimilated that they were described as
"more Irish than the Irish"; and (3) the descendants of the original Normans,
now more appropriately called Norman-Irish, were vigorously resisting two of
feudalism's principal tenets, its emphasis on a strong monarch and its system of
land ownership.
For all three components of the Gaelic Resurgence, there was a single root
cause: The Normans never settled in Ireland in sufficient numbers to fully
implement and protect their military conquest. In 1349 the already inadequate
ratio of Normans to Gaels was further reduced by the Black Death (bubonic
plague), which devastated the relatively crowded villages, where the Normans and
Anglos lived, but hit less hard in pastoral areas, where the Gaelic-Irish lived.
The military component of the Gaelic Resurgence should not have been
surprising. During their advance, the Norman armies always had been vastly
outnumbered, but they nevertheless prevailed because they had better equipment
and superior military skills. Over time, however, the Gaelic lords upgraded
their equipment and military skills, at which time Gaelic numerical superiority
asserted itself. More importantly, the Gaelic lords also "imported" professional
soldiers from Scotland, those magnificent fighting troops of Norse-Gaelic stock
known as the"gallowglasses", who proved to be better fighting men than the
over-extended Normans. Callann (1261) and Ath an Kip (1270) were the decisive
battles.
At Callann (1261), the MacCarthys were the heros for the Gaelic-Irish.
Already confined to the south-west corner of Ireland, the MacCarthys decided to
stand firm against further Norman expansion. They confronted FitzThomas, the
Norman, at Callann, in the mountainous country near Kenmare, and defeated him
decisively. Thereafter the Norman-Irish found themselves unable to expand
southward from the upper half of Kerry, while the MacCarthys and O'Sullivans
reigned supreme in the south-west corner of Ireland.
At Ath an Kip (1270), an equally important battle in the north, Aedh O'Connor
and his "gallowglass" mercenaries carried the day for the Gaelic-Irish. The
Normans -- represented by the royal justiciar and the powerful Walter de Burgo –
decided to expand even further into Ulster, and mounted a huge army which
(according to the Irish annals) included "all the foreigners of Erin with them".
But O'Connor was ready for them. From Scotland, he had brought in
"gallowglasses" to supplement his own army. The two armies met at the ford of
Ath an Kip, where the Norman-Irish were routed, leaving arms and suits of mail
scattered on the field of battle; in the words of the annalist, 'no greater
defeat had been given to the English in Ireland up to that time'.
Callann and Ath an Kip turned the tide. Prior to those battles, the Normans
held about 75% of the island, including the "Pale". Afterward, the Normans
gradually were forced to surrender back more than half of their gains*. By the
mid-1400s, the Gaelic lords had taken back all but about 35% of the island.
The military resurgence paved the way for similar Gaelic Resurgence in
culture and also in government. The cultural and governmental resurgence was
surprising, because each contrasted so dramatically with the Norman experience
in England. In England, after the Battle of Hastings (1066), the French speaking
military aristocracy installed by the Normans literally destroyed Anglo-Saxon
culture and forcibly imposed the Norman-feudal way of life, including the feudal
form of government. In Ireland, however, Gaelic culture prevailed.
Within a few generations, descendants of the original Normans gradually
distanced themselves from the Norman-Anglo way of life and adopted the Gaelic
language, dress and culture, becoming so thoroughly assimilated into Gaelic
society that they were commonly described as "more Irish than the Irish". The
Crown was cognizant of this dramatic assimilation process, and in an attempt to
arrest it, caused enactment of the Statutes of Kilkenny (1366), which prohibited
Norman-Irish from speaking Gaelic, dressing like the Gaelic Irish, riding a
horse bareback (like the Gaelic Irish), marrying Gaelic Irish, and/or engaging
in a wide range of other activities identified as Irish. However, the Statutes
were largely ignored.
The cultural component of the Gaelic resurgence was so complete that when
Henry VIII was declared King of Ireland in 1541 -- 270 years after Ath an Chip
-- the proclamation was read in Gaelic, because only one of the Norman-Irish
lords spoke the King's English.
The cultural component of the Gaelic Resurgence is readily explainable by the
fact that from the outset, the Norman lords married into Gaelic families.
Strongbow himself set the trend by marrying Aoife, MacMurough's daughter. De
Lacy married Rose, daughter of Rory O'Connor, de Courcy married Affreca,
daughter of the king of Man, and so on. The children of these marriages were
half Norman, half Gaelic, and presumably bilingual. Within several generations,
the cultures had merged, and since the surrounding culture was predominantly
Gaelic, descendants became more Gaelic than Norman.
The Gaelic Resurgence in culture was aided by the fact that although the
Normans were pragmatic tyrants on matters of administration and government, they
had no deep seated cultural roots of their own, having migrated from Scandinavia
to Normandy, then to Wales and finally to Ireland, all in a period of only 150
years.
The feudal form of government and land holding, which the Normans originally
installed in Ireland, was also undermined by the Gaelic Resurgence, although the
decline of feudalism in this period was hardly unique to Ireland.
Feudal government was a highly efficient form of centralized government under
which a strong monarch used his control over land to exercise tight discipline
over his subjects through a highly structured "top down" pyramid. The feudal
land system placed the king at the pinnacle of a pyramid, and peasants at the
base, with land as the key to power, status and affluence. Peasants (at the base
of the pyramid) worked the land and paid some species of tribute (e.g., military
service and/or share of crops) to their landlords, Norman lords, who in turn
owed allegiance and service either to overlords or directly to the king, who was
treated as the master landlord of all land within the empire. The feudal land
system was specifically designed to foster a strong centralized government under
a strong monarch. Indeed, tight control by the monarch was a defining trait of
feudalism. Feudalism was developed in Normandy, and was brought to England and
Ireland by the Normans.
In Ireland, by early in the 14th Century, the Norman-Irish lords --
descendants of the original Normans who installed feudalism -- were actively
resisting two of feudalism's principal tenets, the strong monarchy and the
system of land ownership that fostered such power in the Crown. It is fair to
say that feudalism never truly took root in Ireland, except perhaps in parts of
the "Pale".
The resistance of the Norman-Irish lords to strong centralized government
actually began fifty years before other components of the Gaelic Resurgence,
during the reign of John I (1199-1216). It was part of a much larger revolt of
English (and Irish) barons against John's effort to increase the power of the
Crown at the expense of the English (and Irish) barons. The unfortunate John,
weakened by his earlier loss of Normandy, lost the power struggle and was
instead forced to sign the Magna Carta (1215), incorporating the barons' demands
for increased power. The Magna Carta was extended to Norman-Irish lords in 1217.
Thereafter, the barons reorganized themselves from an mere advisory body into
the Parliament, and over the next 425 years seldom missed an opportunity to grab
power away from the Crown, eventually leading to the demise of classic
feudalism.
The feudal land system also was a constant source of conflict. The
Norman-Irish lords were still resisting it late in the reign of Queen Elizabeth
I (r. 1558-1603), who finally succeeded in coercing reluctant Norman-Irish lords
into converting their lands into feudal manors through a "surrender and
re-grant" program under which the lords would convey ("surrender") their land to
the Crown, on condition that the Crown would re-grant them the same land under
liberal terms and conditions consistent with feudal land practices.
In the mid-1300s, three extraordinary Norman-Irish earldoms emerged: Desmond
and Kildare (each headed by a branch of the Fitzgeralds) and Ormond (headed by
the Butlers). These and other Norman-Irish lords were even more secure than
English barons in challenging the Crown, because English monarchs never were
able to devote to Ireland the resources and attention required to maintain
control. Instead, during virtually the entire period 1294 to 1485, the Crown was
distracted from Irish affairs by the Hundred Years' War* (1338-1453) and the War
of Roses (1455-85). This was one of the principal reasons the feudal form of
government failed in Ireland, while succeeding at least temporarily in England.
In 1394-95, King Richard II, who turned out to be the last of the Angevin
kings, visited Ireland and described its population as comprising (1) the "wild
Irish", (2) the "English rebels", and (3) the "loyal English". Richard was able
to hammer out a power sharing agreement with the Norman-Irish lords, but it
triggered a series of skirmishes, and in one of them, Richard's presumptive
heir, Mortimer, was killed. Richard returned to Ireland seeking vengeance, but
while he was away from England, his throne was usurped by Henry Bollingbroke
(Henry IV), who eventually executed Richard.
Bollingbroke's usurpation, which led to the War of Roses between the English
Houses of York and Lancaster, impacted Ireland dramatically. Essentially, the
resulting turmoil rendered the Crown virtually powerless in Ireland. Thus
between 1399 and 1534, governance of Ireland fell largely into the hands of
Norman-Irish lords who were considered relatively loyal to the Crown. Initially
it was the Fitzgeralds of Desmond, but after 1468, governance fell to the
Fitzgeralds of Kildare, whose tenure was called the "Kildare Supremacy". For
almost 40 years, the eighth Earl of Kildare (the "Great Earl") functioned as the
uncrowned King of Ireland. He was succeeded by his son, Garrett Og.
Elsewhere in Europe, meanwhile, gunpowder had been introduced into warfare in
the mid-1300s, and the printing press became a commercial success in 1450. Most
importantly, demands clearly were growing for reform of the Catholic Church,
which had become the object of criticism by virtue of the Inquisitions, the sale
of indulgences, and the Pope's powerful influence in affairs of state. (However,
it was not until 1517 that Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant
Reformation, formally broke with the Catholic Church.
END NOTES TO CHAPTER 5.
*The resurgence naturally experienced periods of fallback, along with the
periods of progress. In 1315, apparently at the invitation of some Gaelic lords,
Robert Bruce, King of Scots who had ousted the English from Scotland, dispatched
his brother Edward and 6,000 troops to Ireland, where Edward's forces proved
unstoppable for over three years, after which he was crowned "King of Erin"
(1316). But in 1318, at Faughart, Edward was slain in his only losing battle,
following which his troops scattered and returned to Scotland. Edward's campaign
seemed momentous at the time, but turned out to be a mere footnote in Irish
history.
*The Hundred Years' War is the name traditionally given to the Anglo-French
conflicts that occurred between 1337 and 1453, but a more accurate set of dates
would be the 150-year period from 1294 to 1444.
Ch. 6. The Tudor Re-Conquest of Ireland (1485-1607).
The five monarchs of the 118 year Tudor Dynasty in England (1486-1603) --
particularly Henry VIII (r.1509-47) and his daughter Elizabeth I (r.1558-1603)
-- had an enormous impact on Ireland and its people. In addition to imposing
Poynings Law on Ireland, they ousted the Catholic Church (with the Pope as its
head), and replaced it with a Protestant Church (with the English Crown as its
head), thereby sowing the seeds for centuries of religious conflict in Ireland;
they extinguished the "Kildare Supremacy" and established the principle that the
King of England automatically became King of Ireland; they partially destroyed
Irish culture through an "anglicization" program that imposed England's
language, laws, culture and religion on Ireland; and they "re-conquered" Ireland
by defeating the Gaelic lords at Kinsale, thereby extinguishing the old Gaelic
order and paving the way for plantations and eventually for "union" with
England.
The Tudor Dynasty began when Henry Tudor, a Lancaster, defeated Richard III,
a York, at Bosworth Field in 1485, thereby ending the War of Roses (1455-85)
between the royal Houses of Lancaster and York, who had been vying for the
Crown. Tudor then took the throne as Henry VII, after which he united the two
houses by marrying Elizabeth of York and executing all other potential heirs
from the House of York.
Henry VII's major contribution to Irish history was forcing the Irish
parliament to adopt Poynings's Law (1494). This law, which was prompted by
Ireland's support of the Yorkist side in the Wars of the Roses, gave the English
Privy Council a veto over legislation proposed in future Irish parliaments.
Henry VII died in 1509, and was succeeded by his second son, Henry VIII, the
most colorful of the medieval monarchs. Almost immediately, Henry VIII
determined to assert a greater degree of sovereignty over Ireland. He was
uncomfortable with the fact that his chief deputy in Ireland, the Earl of
Kildare, was an "English rebel" who did not even speak English, and who had
become "more Irish than the Irish". More importantly, Henry was concerned that
Ireland could be used as an ideal launching site for an invasion of England by
sea. English monarchs had appreciated this danger for centuries, but the Hundred
Years War (1338-1453) and the War of Roses (1455-85) had diverted attention away
from Ireland. Now, with those wars over, the time seemed right to address the
problem.
Thus in 1519, while Henry was still a fervent Catholic (and 14 years before
he broke with the Catholic Church), he seriously considered "planting" Ireland
with loyal English colonists who would constitute an English garrison in
Ireland. However, Henry's feasibility study showed that a "plantation" program
would require huge expenditures for an occupation army. Thus Henry settled
instead for a coercive "anglicization" program under which the English language
and culture, and particularly feudal land law, would be forcibly imposed on
Ireland. Its most important component was a "surrender and re-grant" program
under which negotiations and military threats were used to coerce Irish lords to
"submit" to the Crown -- i.e., to acknowledge subservience and surrender their
lands -- but on condition the lords would receive back the same lands as feudal
fiefdoms. The policy proved moderately successful. Meanwhile, by 1527, Henry was
finding it expedient to address his marital problems, which quickly became
entangled with the "Protestant Reformation".
On the Continent, the "Reformation" began about 1517, when Martin Luther
disagreed with the Catholic Church on matters of conscience. In England,
Luther's "Reformation" attracted only modest support until 1533 when Henry, in
an effort to solve his marital problems, formally embraced it and officially
established a "Reformed Church".
Shortly before his coronation (1509), Henry had married his brother Arthur's
widow, Catherine of Aragon, who bore him a daughter, Mary. But by 1527, it had
become clear that Catherine would not bear him a male heir to continue the Tudor
line. Thus Henry asked Pope Clement VII for an annulment and a decree that he
was free to marry his new inamorata, Anne Boleyn. When the Pope refused, Henry's
chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, engineered two Acts of Parliament (1533 and
1534) which ousted the Catholic Church and replaced it with a new and
independent Church of England, which was headed by the Crown (Henry himself) in
place of the Pope. Henry promptly appointed a new Archbishop of Canterbury, who
annulled Henry's marriage to Catherine, after which Henry married Anne. Henry's
new "Anglican" religion was identical to Catholicism in liturgy and theology,
and was sometimes characterized as "Catholicism without the Pope".
In 1533, Anne Boleyn bore Henry a daughter, Elizabeth. She was declared heir
to the throne in place of Catherine's daughter, Mary, who was now regarded as
illegitimate. Anne Boleyn also failed to bear a son, however. For this reason,
and because of her alleged infidelity to the king, she was executed in 1536.
Finally, Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour, bore Henry a son, Edward. Jane
Seymour died in 1537, shortly after Edward's birth. Henry had three more wives,
none of whom bore children*.
Shortly after his success in ousting the Catholic Church, Henry summoned
Garrett Og, the Earl of Kildare, to England for negotiations intended to expand
the Crown's control in Ireland, while curtailing the "Kildare Supremacy". While
the Earl was in England, his son, Thomas Fitzgerald, invaded the Dublin
Parliament, surrendered the sword of state and announced that he was no longer
the King's deputy but his enemy**. Thomas' men wore a silken fringe on his
jacket, inspiring his nickname "Silken Thomas". Henry imprisoned the Earl in the
Tower of London (where he died a year later), and dispatched an army to Ireland.
Henry's army introduced cannons to Ireland and quickly forced Kildare's forces
at Maynooth to surrender, after which the survivors were given the "pardon of
Maynooth", i.e., they were executed. "Silken Thomas" himself escaped, but
eventually he surrendered and was sent to the Tower of London. After two years
Thomas was executed, along with five of his brothers, thereby terminating the
celebrated 69 year "Kildare Supremacy". Thereafter, no English monarch ever
appointed an Irishman as his chief deputy in Ireland.
In 1537, the Irish Parliament declared the Anglican religion to be the
"established" (i.e., official) religion of the Church of Ireland. Anglicism also
became a part of the "English culture" that Henry was forcibly imposing on
Ireland. But this complicated the task enormously because there was virtually no
indigenous sympathy for "reform" among either the Gaelic-Irish or the
Norman-Irish, who remained totally committed to the Pope.
In 1541 Henry had himself declared King of Ireland.
Henry died in 1547. Although he earlier had sponsored legislation excluding
both daughters from succession, Henry's will, which provided for the succession
of his three children in classic order, was honored. Thus Henry was succeeded by
his son, Edward VI (r. 1547-53), who had little impact, particularly in Ireland.
Edward was succeeded by his half-sister, Mary I (r. 1553-58), the daughter of
Catherine of Aragon. Mary remained a Catholic and officially restored the
Catholic religion, but during her short 5 year reign, she was hostile to Ireland
for reasons other than religion, and in fact imposed England's first plantation
on Ireland. Mary was succeeded by her sister Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) who
reigned for 43 years, and proved to be one of England's strongest monarchs ever.
Elizabeth adopted the Anglican religion, instituting the "Book of Common
Prayer", and imposing "recusary fines" on individuals (of whatever religion) who
failed to attend Anglican Church services. In Ireland, the Catholicism of the
Norman-Irish (a.k.a. "English Rebels") became another factor distancing them
from the Crown, but overall, Elizabeth was remarkably tolerant of her otherwise
loyal Norman-Irish subjects, in part because she feared they might align with
France and/or Spain, both Catholic and both enemies of England.
Although relatively tolerant in matters of religion, Elizabeth was the most
brutal of all English monarchs in crushing other challenges to the authoritarian
power of the Crown. Elizabeth and her generals devised a "scorched earth" policy
under which they executed every human being who could be found, including
innocent women and children, and then, to starve the survivors, they burned all
crops, killed all animals, and destroyed every structure. Even the preeminent
British historian W.E.H. Lecky, deplored the indiscriminate butchery: "[Complete
authority of the Crown within Ireland] dates only from the great wars of
Elizabeth, which . . . crushed the native population to the dust . . . The
suppression of the native race . . . was carried on with a ferocity which . . .
has seldom been exceeded in the page of history. . . . The war . . . was
literally a war of extermination. . . . Not only the men, but even the women and
children who fell into the hands of the English, were deliberately and
systematically butchered. . . . Year after year over a great part of Ireland,
all means of human subsistence were destroyed, no quarter was given to prisoners
who surrendered, and the whole population was skillfully and steadily starved to
death. . . . Long before the war had terminated, Elizabeth was assured that she
had little left to reign over but ashes and carcasses. . . [I]n six months, more
than 30,000 people had been starved to death in Munster, besides those who were
hung or who perished by the sword." Thus when disputes over land and religion
precipitated the "Desmond Rebellion" (1579), Elizabeth's generals suppressed it
with their "scorched earth" policy; and once the Native-Irish were driven out,
Munster was "planted" with loyal English subjects.
The Norman-Irish lords generally were intimidated by Elizabeth's "scorched
earth" tactics, and reluctantly accepted the "surrender and re-grant" offer
initiated by her father. In Ulster, however, the Gaelic chieftains had no
intention of submitting to Elizabeth without a full scale war. As early as 1562,
Shane the Proud, an Ulster O'Neill, challenged Elizabeth directly. Although
willing to acknowledge Elizabeth's sovereignty, he adamantly refused to permit
within Ulster the feudal land system, the English language, or any other part of
her "anglicization" program. Surprisingly, Elizabeth backed down.
The Ulster Gaels brought their defiance to a head in 1595. Led by Hugh
O'Neill (1550-1615), 2d earl of Tyrone, and his young ally, Red Hugh O'Donnell
(1571-1602), they mounted a major rebellion. Fighting began in Ulster, where
O'Neill used classic guerilla tactics to achieve a series of successes,
including a stunning victory over England's Earl of Essex at Yellow Ford in
1598. In 1600, Essex was replaced by a better soldier, Lord Mountjoy, whose
first initiative was to inflict a severe "scorched earth" policy on the Ulster
countryside. Then help for O'Neill arrived from Spain: Money, ammunition, and a
small Spanish force of 4,000 troops under Don Juan de Aguilla, which landed at
Kinsale in September 1601. O'Neill marched south to meet Aguilla. The Spanish
and Irish troops did not fit well together, in part because O'Neill's guerrillas
were not familiar with the frontal warfare methods of the Spanish. Nevertheless,
their combined forces engaged Mountjoy at the Battle of Kinsale (1601). O'Neill
and Aguilla had 9,000 troops and 500 horse against Mountjoy's 6,300 men, but
Mountjoy's well trained force carried the day. O'Neill himself survived and held
out for another 15 months, but in practical effect, Kinsale had decided
everything; the six year war was unexpectedly over.
O'Neill submitted pursuant to the Treaty of Mellifont on March 1603, six days
after the death of Elizabeth, who is credited with completing the re-conquest of
Ireland. James I, her successor, was willing to let the Gaelic lords live on
their ancestral lands as English-style nobles, but not as petit kings within the
old Gaelic social system. He pardoned them, but only on condition they accept
the "surrender and regrant" program.
The celebrated "Flight of the Earls" occurred four years later. Dissatisfied
with their new roles, and still fearing retaliation, O'Neill and virtually the
entire remaining Gaelic leadership (99 leaders in all), secretly boarded a ship
at night at Loch Swilley and sailed for the Continent, never to return. The date
was September 14, 1607.
END NOTES TO CHAPTER 6.
*Henry's fourth marriage, to Anne of Cleves, was negotiated by Thomas
Cromwell. But Henry was displeased with Anne's appearance and divorced her
almost immediately, after which Cromwell was charged with treason and executed.
Henry then married Catherine Howard, who was beheaded in 1542 for alleged
unchastity. Henry's last wife, Catherine Parr, survived him.
**Historians disagree on the motivations of "Silken Thomas". One theory is
that Thomas was reacting to false information from the Earl of Ormond that his
father the Earl had been imprisoned by Henry. The other interpretation is that
Thomas and his father were implementing a planned conspiracy to persuade Henry
that he could not afford to abandon his reliance on the Kildare earls in
governing Ireland.
Ch. 7. Protestant Takeover: 17th Century "Plantations"
(1608-1691).
The Battle of Kinsale, along with the "Flight of the Earls", marked the end
of the old Gaelic order, and established England as conqueror of Ireland. What
followed next -- the 17th Century "Plantations" -- were perhaps the most
important development in Irish history since arrival of the Celts. They divided
Ireland apartheid-like into two hostile camps.
Under these Plantations -- the Ulster Plantation (1609), the Cromwellian
Plantation (1652) and the Williamite Plantation (1693) -- 81% of the productive
land in Ireland was confiscated from the native Irish (Gaelic-Irish and
Norman-Irish alike, but invariably Catholic), and transferred to new immigrants
(invariably Protestant) from Scotland and England. The Plantations impacted
Ireland in two major ways. First, they introduced into Ireland a new community
-- eventually 25% of the populace -- which differed radically from the natives
not only in religion, but also in culture, ethnicity, and national identity.
Second, in Ireland's overwhelmingly agrarian economy -- where land equaled
wealth and power (and vice versa) -- the Plantations caused a massive transfer
of wealth and power to non-native landlords, whose backbreaking rents then
thrust 85% of the natives into crushing poverty and degradation. The Plantations
are the root cause of the class warfare (rich landlord versus poor tenant) and
religious/cultural clashes that have plagued Ireland since 1610.
Plantations were the medieval equivalent of "ethnic cleansing" in that -- in
theory at least -- all occupants of confiscated land were to be evicted and
resettled in Connacht where they would be less of a military threat.
Anti-Catholic animus played a role in the Plantations, but other motivations
were more important. For the new immigrants, the principal motivation was
fertile land at bargain rents. For the Crown, Plantations would deprive
dissident Irish lords of the land that was their only real source of power; and
further, there would be established within Ireland a loyal non-Irish minority
which would served as an unpaid police force to keep dissident Irish in check.
Halfhearted attempts at plantation had been made under Mary in the 1550s, and
under Elizabeth in the 1580s, but neither had instilled the pro-English mind set
sought by the Crown. But after the "flight of the earls", the time seemed right
for a serious plantation program.
Although nominally directed at the aristocracy, the Plantations also
devastated peasants, who suffered the loss of their property rights under the
ancient Gaelic law of gravelkind*, which previously had virtually guaranteed
them a decent living from the soil. It turned out that peasants were needed for
hard labor, so many of them, despite the original "resettlement in Connacht"
plan, were allowed to remain as farm laborers or tenant-farmers, but at low
wages or backbreaking rents that thrust them into abject poverty. Predictably,
both in resentful peasants and in their Gaelic lords, there developed a 285 year
obsession -- sometimes violent, sometimes political -- to overturn or modify the
confiscations via "land reform", a term which (depending on time and place)
might mean anything from a complete reversal of the confiscations to a modest
improvement in tenants' rights.
The first 17th Century plantation (the "Ulster Plantation") involved
confiscation of three million acres (about 30% of the island), all in six
counties in west and central Ulster. The Ulster confiscations were directed
almost exclusively at the Gaelic lords and their supporters who had been
defeated at Kinsale: O'Neill, O'Donnell, O'Reilly, O'Hanlon, O'Doherty and
others. The official plantation indirectly encouraged the much heavier
unsponsored migration of working class Presbyterians from Scotland to Counties
Down and Antrim. These migrations permitted eviction of native Catholics in
favor of new Presbyterian settlers, whose descendants remain dominant in
Northern Ireland even today**. The Ulster Plantation has been described as
England's only successful colony in Ireland.
The Norman-Irish lords -- now called "Old English" to distinguish them from
"New English" settlers and the "Gaelic Irish"-- were largely unaffected by the
Ulster Plantation; but soon, on a large scale, they found themselves victims of
New English "discoverers" whose business was to find defects in native Irish
land titles, resulting in land forfeitures to the Crown (plus commissions for
the discoverers). Then in 1625 James I, who was thought to be a secret Catholic,
was succeeded by Charles I (r. 1625-49). Charles was not particularly
anti-Catholic -- his wife was Catholic -- but the "Old English" deemed it
prudent to cooperate in a deal proposed by Charles. At Charles' urging, they
contributed 120,000 to Charles for his war with Spain, and Charles agreed to
modest reforms known as "the Graces", the most important of which was a law
(already on the books in England) confirming title in any person who had
possessed land for 60 years or more. But after accepting the cash, Charles
yielded to pressure from Parliament and reneged on formalizing "the Graces".
The Rebellion of 1641 sought to redress a variety of grievances, including
the "Graces" grievance, by exploiting a bitter power struggle between Charles
and the English Parliament. By way of background, for centuries Parliament had
been wresting more and more power from a reluctant Crown, creating an ongoing
conflict. (Supporters of the Crown were called "Royalists", supporters of
Parliament were "Parliamentarians".) When Elizabeth died in 1603, James VI of
Scotland, a Stuart, acceded to the English throne as James I. This gave Scotland
and England a single king, even though the countries remained independent. But
this actually escalated the conflict, rather than reducing it. Now, superimposed
on the Royalist-Parliamentarian conflict were warring factions of religious
zealots: Presbyterians (who dominated in Scotland) versus Anglicans (who
dominated in England), not to mention Catholics (who enjoyed considerable
empathy from the Stuart monarchs, some of whom were Catholic). When the Puritans
won a narrow majority in the House of Commons, Charles (supported by the
Anglican church) literally found himself on the verge of a civil war against
Parliament, which already was arranging military support from Presbyterian
Scotland.
Sir Phelim O'Neill led the Rebellion of 1641, which began with skirmishing in
Ulster, during which as many as 12,000 Protestant non-combatants were killed.
The rising actually was rooted in disputes over land -- no surprise here -- and
to a lesser extent over religion, but O'Neill insisted that his forces were
simply supporting the King against a belligerent Parliament. This pressured the
"Old English", who had Royalist leanings, to join O'Neill's Gaelic forces in an
uneasy alliance, the "Kilkenny Confederation". Soon, no Irishman could avoid
taking sides, creating surprising alliances: some Catholics supported
Parliament, while some Scottish Presbyterians joined O'Neill's Royalists. Even
the Pope got involved; he dispatched to Ireland a papal nuncio, Cardinal
Rinuccini, who persuaded the rebels to reject a proposed compromise because it
did not restore Catholicism to its pre-Reformation position in Ireland. The
rebels mounted a seven year insurgency which, if all had gone smoothly, might
have led to a permanent accommodation with a divided England. In fact, however,
the principal effect of the rebellion was to trigger the English Civil War, in
which the king and parliament finally went to war with each other. Parliament's
army, led by Oliver Cromwell (a Congregationalist member of Parliament) defeated
Charles in a two phase war. Following a trial, Charles I was beheaded (1649) and
the monarchy was abolished.
In 1649, Cromwell brought his army to Ireland and quashed the rebellion with
a savagery that has become legendary. After town of Drogheda had surrendered,
Cromwell's troops massacred 3,500 residents, including unarmed women and
children. At Wexford, he perpetrated a similar massacre. Cromwell regarded the
massacres as appropriate retribution for the deaths of the non-combatant Ulster
Protestants in 1641. The rebellion was soon over.
Cromwell and his Puritans spelled disaster for all Catholics, but
particularly for the Norman-Irish (a.k.a. "Old English"). Puritans were
virulently anti-Catholic, and England's traditional tolerance for the "Old
English" (vis-a-vis "Gaelic Irish") quickly became extinct, with both
communities now treated as Catholic enemies of England. It was during the
Cromwellian era (1649-60) that anti-Catholic animus reached its highest level in
Irish history. The "New English" enthusiastically embraced the government's
anti-Catholic policy, not only because they were anti-Catholic, but also because
it preserved their privileged position.
The Cromwellian Plantation followed the war. It was the largest and most
acrimonious of the confiscations, reducing Catholic ownership of land another
37%, from 59% to 22% Whereas the Ulster Plantation had confiscated land
principally from the Gaelic-Irish, the Cromwellian Plantation took land largely
from "Old English" Catholics (who had joined the rebellion hesitantly and only
to show their support for the king), and transferred it to Cromwell's soldiers
(in lieu of back pay) and to investors in the war effort. By the mid 1660s, the
Cromwellian and Ulster Plantations had created a huge landlord class, including
the oft-vilified absentee landlords, whose rental income often permitted them to
lead lives of leisure, while backbreaking rents had thrust the native Irish into
abject poverty, with 85% of the populace living at subsistence level. This laid
the foundation for class warfare -- rich versus poor, or more accurately, rich
Protestant landlord versus poor Catholic tenant -- which later erupted as the
"land wars".
In 1688-90, the old line Irish (the descendants of the pre-17th Century
Irish, including both Gaelic-Irish and Norman-Irish Catholics) arose again when
they took sides in a war between two claimants to the English Crown. They
supported the hereditary and rightful claimant, James II, against the man who
had deposed him, William of Orange. In England, James was seen as representing
both Royalists and Catholics, while William represented the Parliamentarian and
Protestant factions. In Ireland, though, this particular war, unlike the
Rebellion of 1641, was seen unequivocally as a war between Catholic and
Protestant. Ironically, the Pope supported William, because a James victory
would only add to the power of the already worrisome King of France, Louis XIV.
Again, some English history is essential. With Cromwell as the dominant
figure in Parliament, the English throne had remained vacant since Charles I was
beheaded in 1649. When Cromwell died in 1658, however, the Puritans began to
lose control, and in 1660 they resolved their differences with the Royalists
through a series of compromises known as the "Restoration". Under it, the Stuart
monarchy was restored, but subject to a power sharing agreement with Parliament.
Charles II (son of the beheaded Charles I) was brought back from exile to take
the throne. The Anglican Church was reaffirmed as the "established" Church, but
Charles II, whose father had been executed in part because of religious
differences, saw fit to accord Catholics a high degree of tolerance (or benign
neglect).
In 1684, Charles II was succeeded by his Stuart brother James II. James, who
had converted to Catholicism in 1671, and was an advocate of an absolutist
monarchy, unnerved the establishment. In his brief four year reign as King,
James II alienated virtually every power base in England through a series of
measures designed to increase the power of the Crown and to increase the civil
rights of Catholics. James' most ominous initiative was recruiting a
predominantly Catholic army in Ireland, and then partly transferring it to
England. When a son was born to James in 1688, thereby insuring a Catholic
succession, a plot known as the "Glorious Revolution" was hatched to overthrow
James II.
James' grand-daughter Mary, and her Dutch Protestant husband, William of
Orange (who was also James' nephew), accepted the invitation of several English
notables to invade England, to overthrow James and to accede to the throne. When
William arrived in England in November 1688, his partisans arose in rebellion in
Yorkshire and elsewhere. Meanwhile James' forces deserted, and James himself
fled to France. The coup d' etat was bloodless. In 1689, William and Mary were
declared joint sovereigns, William III and Mary II. James II had been ousted
after only four years.
But James' Catholic army in Ireland remained intact; and in an effort to
regain his rightful throne, James promptly began recruiting new Irish and French
troops from his exile in France. He shrewdly exploited Irish resentment over
land, promising old line Irish that if his war was successful, they would
recover their lands and power.
The first confrontation arose when James sent Catholic troops to Derry (then
a Protestant city) to replace the existing Protestant garrison. Derry's leaders
decided to welcome the new troops in the customary way, but this was highly
controversial among Derry's inhabitants. Then 13 apprentice boys took matters
into their own hands, seized the keys to the city gates, and slammed the gates
in the faces of King James' troops. A lengthy siege of Derry followed, but
William's troops finally arrived to relieve the inhabitants. Apprentice Boys Day
is still a major Protestant holiday in Northern Ireland.
In March 1689, James arrived in Ireland to take charge of his army (25,000
strong). He also presided over a new and largely Catholic Parliament, which
voted to overturn the earlier plantations. In June 1690, William of Orange and
his army (36,000 troops, mostly non-Irish) arrived to do battle.
At the Battle of the Boyne (July 1, 1690), William's army handily defeated
James' forces. In military terms, it was not a decisive victory, since Irish
losses were small and their army lived to fight another day. But James
immediately fled back to France, thereby (in European minds) effectively
abandoning his claim to the throne.
Under Patrick Sarsfield, the Irish (with some French support) continued the
fight for more than a year before suffering a devastating defeat at Aughrim.
Finally, Sarsfield negotiated an honorable surrender embodied in the Treaty of
Limerick (1691). Because William was anxious to move his troops to Flanders for
the war against France, and also because he wanted to put behind him any
challenges to the legitimacy of his reign, the Treaty was surprisingly generous
to Catholics. It provided (1) that Catholics would have the same religious
liberty enjoyed under Charles II, and (2) that those still resisting William, if
they took an Oath of Allegiance, would be pardoned and allowed to keep their
property, practice professions and bear civilian arms. Sarsfield demanded that
these concessions apply not only to his own troops, but also to the entire
Catholic community: It was "the first thing insisted upon by them, and agreed to
by us", according to one of William's negotiators. But when the formal Treaty
was presented to the English and Irish Parliaments for ratification, this latter
provision -- the infamous "missing clause" -- was omitted, thereby facilitating
the enactment anti-Catholic Penal laws, over the objection of King William.
The Treaty also contemplated that Sarsfield and more than 10,000 Irish troops
would leave Ireland for the Continent. They did so -- the celebrated "flight of
the 'Wild Geese'" -- and became legendary soldiers in the armies of France and
other continental powers.
There ensued the third and final wave of 17th Century plantations (the
"Williamite Plantation"), which reduced Catholic ownership of land from 22% to
14%.
Short term, the plantations were enormously successful for England. In 1603,
before the Battle of Kinsale, about 95% of land in Ireland was owned by
Catholics; by 1701, less than a century later, only 14% was owned by Catholics,
an aggregate transfer of 81% of all productive land in Ireland. Further, the
percentage of non-Irish in the population had been increased from 5% to 25%. It
is possible that the Crown expected the Irish and British cultures to merge
eventually (with English culture predominating, naturally), but of course this
did not happen. Instead, the Plantations divided Ireland, apartheid-like, into
two hostile camps, a socio-economic tinder box virtually certain to eventually
explode.
--In one camp was 75% of the populace: Poverty stricken, landless, ethnically
Irish (Gaelic-Irish or Norman-Irish), Gaelic speaking, Catholic, and powerless;
these descendants of pre-17th Century natives thought of themselves as Irish,
not English, and were more hostile than ever before towards their English
conquerors.
--In the other camp was 25% of the populace: Affluent landed gentry,
ethnically British (English or Scots), English speaking, Protestant (Anglican
[10%] and Presbyterian [15%]), and politically dominant; these immigrants
thought of themselves as the Crown's colony in Ireland, not as Irishmen
(although within a few generations they began to regard themselves as a
"Protestant [Irish] nation").
"Catholic versus Protestant" has been the convenient shorthand to describe
divisions within Ireland, but this is overly simplistic. The important dividing
line was between a conquering people (who happened to be British, English
speaking and Protestant) and a vanquished people (who happened to be Irish,
Gaelic speaking and Catholic). The conquerors then confiscated the land and
wealth of Ireland, thus creating the class warfare which has long plagued
Ireland: rich landlord versus poverty stricken tenant. No one would deny that
religion, ethnicity, language and culture were and still are important
components in the mutual antagonism -- particularly in segregating an individual
into one of the two camps -- but the sheer longevity of these hostilities is
attributable to enduring disparities in power and wealth.
END NOTES TO CHAPTER 7.
*Under gravelkind, land was the common property of society, subject to
preferential rights of families who worked or lived on it. And although the
Gaelic lord held nominal title to land, he did so as trustee for the community,
i.e., he had no power to transfer or to extinguish the community's rights in
such land. But when English courts ruled that gravelkind was illegal, it
followed that confiscations from the Gaelic lords also terminated peasants'
rights.
**Created in 1920, Northern Ireland consists of six counties: Armagh,
Londonderry (originally Coleraine), Tyrone and Fermanagh (all planted counties),
plus Antrim and Down (which received major unsponsored migrations, but were not
planted). The historic province of Ulster comprised all of these six counties,
plus three counties now in the Republic of Ireland: Donegal and Cavin (both
planted counties) plus Monaghan (which never was planted).
Ch. 8. Penal Laws, Ascendancy and "Union" With England (1692-1800).
For more than 100 years after the Treaty of Limerick (1691) -- a period later
called the "Age of Penal Laws" or "Protestant Ascendancy" -- Ireland was a
powder keg of social unrest due to a repressive and apartheid-like society in
which a small Anglican minority (10% of the population) used its ownership of
land and its control of government to deny power, influence and civil rights to
Catholics (75% of the population) and to a lesser degree to Presbyterians (15%).
Nevertheless, despite serious tensions that constantly threatened to erupt into
widespread violence -- rich versus poor, landlord versus tenant, Catholic versus
Protestant -- Ireland was able to avoid open revolution. Then in 1782 England,
while still reeling from the American Revolution, permitted Ireland to evolve
into a semi-autonomous (but still repressive) "Protestant Nation", a peaceful
transition that contrasted dramatically with the violent Revolutions in America
(1775-83) and in France (1789-99). Finally, the Rebellion of 1798, a modest and
wildly unsuccessful rising led by Presbyterians, triggered a 180 degree change
of direction: The Irish Parliament disavowed its autonomy and entered into a
"union" (merger) with England (1800) that nearly destroyed Ireland's separate
identity.
Almost immediately after the Treaty of Limerick (1691), Anglicans took
decisive action to further strengthen their dominant position. Notwithstanding
the Treaty, the Irish and English Parliaments, both dominated by Anglicans,
enacted a series of "Penal Laws" (a.k.a. the "Popery Code") which,
apartheid-like, created a three tier, Anglican controlled society in which (1)
Catholics (75% of the population) would be totally excluded from property and
power, and (2) Presbyterians (15% of the population) would remain subordinate to
Anglicans.
Catholics and Presbyterians alike were required to tithe to the Anglican
Church of Ireland, but were officially barred from government employment and
military commissions. Catholics alone were barred from elective office, from
entering the legal profession, from bearing arms, and from owning a horse worth
more than five pounds. Upon the death of a Catholic landlord, his property by
law went to his sons in equal shares, unless one of them converted to
Anglicanism, in which case the Anglican son received the entire property, along
with the right to immediately wrest management from his parents. Catholics were
prohibited from purchasing realty, except leases of less than 31 years. (Between
1701 and 1778 Catholic ownership of land further declined from 14% to 5%).
Catholics were barred from educating their children (except in schools
proselytizing for the Anglican religion). Catholic bishops were banned from
Ireland (under penalty of death by hanging, disemboweling and quartering). The
last of the Penal Laws, enacted in 1727, denied Catholics the right to vote.
In enacting the Penal Laws, the Parliament of England was motivated almost
entirely by anti-Catholic animus, but the Parliament of Ireland had additional
motivation: preserving the privileged position of the New English "haves"
vis-a-vis the native "have nots". William and Mary initially opposed the "Penal
Laws" as violative of the Treaty, but religious freedom for Catholics was not
the highest priority for William, and the Crown soon acquiesced. Except for the
Cromwellian era (1649-60), the period 1692-1740 was the most anti-Catholic in
Irish history. However, anti-Catholic animus peaked in the mid-1730s, then
gradually subsided over the next 130 years, as anti-Catholic laws were gradually
repealed, one by one.
The Penal Laws helped create the misnamed "Protestant Ascendancy", which
would have been more accurately called "Anglican Dominance". Under it, all of
society, and certainly all of government, was dominated by an elitist
aristocracy consisting exclusively of Anglicans. The stereotypical Ascendancy
gentleman attended Trinity College, lived a hard-drinking, party-oriented life
of luxury in a "big house", pursued a respectable professional career in law,
government, education or the military, and above all, collected high rents from
his Irish tenants. But he also was insecure. His prosperity and privilege were
rooted in land confiscations which, if the old line Irish ever regained control,
were likely to be overturned. And he knew full well that British troops were
critical in keeping the old line Irish in check.
The vast majority of Catholics lived and worked on the farm in abject
poverty, degradation and despair, with no way out. Their diet consisted almost
entirely of the newly introduced potato, plus milk (with a herring once or twice
a year). Shelter, if any, was a mud hovel with leaky roof and no windows or
chimney. Even Catholics who labored full time lived in worse degradation than
the poorest beggars elsewhere in Europe. A handful of Catholics achieved middle
class prosperity in business -- and their numbers grew as time went by -- but
they were exceptions. In terms of compliance with law, Catholics were made
criminals under the Penal Laws because they refused to turn in their "illegal"
priests, and the draconian injustice of these laws engendered in them a culture
of disrespect for the law generally.
Presbyterians congregated in Ulster, where typically they adhered to the
culture (and religion) brought over from Scotland by their ancestors. Close knit
and industrious, they responded to discrimination by distancing themselves from
Ascendancy culture, becoming a self reliant community within the larger society.
The typical Presbyterian pursued a middle class livelihood in the linen business
or in farming.
Anglicans and Presbyterians soon found themselves in serious conflict. The
principal problem was that the "established" Church of Ireland, and its Anglican
members, treated the Presbyterian Religion as a second class religion, and its
members (who generally were less affluent than Anglicans) as second class
citizens. Although Presbyterians were treated far better than Catholics -- there
were no restrictions on the right to own realty or to bear arms -- they were
required to tithe to the Anglican Church of Ireland, and were prohibited from
holding government office or military commissions. Many emigrated to America
where their descendants served with distinction in George Washington's
Revolutionary army.
The Ascendancy also resented Mother England's insistence upon treating
Ireland as a subservient colony, useful primarily for enhancing the prosperity
of England. British trade legislation, which typically discriminated against
Ireland, was particularly grating. For example, in order to protect English
manufacturers, the English Parliament prohibited the export of Irish woolen
goods to any country except England, where prohibitive duties made such trade
unprofitable. This legislation literally destroyed the Irish woolen industry, to
the dismay of merchants of all religions. The Ascendancy lobbied constantly for
a more balanced alliance, something akin to an equal partnership, provided it
could be attained without losing England's military protection. But no serious
effort was made to address this problem in the first half of the 18th Century,
and even within the Ascendancy, discontent was rampant.
In the latter half of the 18th Century, the Western World was permanently
changed by two major "revolutions": (1) The Industrial Revolution, in which
labor saving machines, both on farms and in factories, permitted the
"necessities" to be produced with far less manpower, thereby freeing surplus
manpower to be used in the production of non-necessities, and (2) A series of
violent populist revolutions -- exemplified by the American Revolution (1775-83)
and the French Revolution (1789-99) -- which erupted against colonial empires
and undemocratic governments. Ireland was not totally exempt from either
revolution.
The Industrial Revolution, which began in England in the 1760s, bypassed most
of Ireland, but it took root and flourished in and around Belfast, which became
the linen center of the world, and the industrial center of Ireland. For the
northeast, industrialization meant prosperity, along with stronger export and
economic ties with Britain, but it also brought the start of urban problems
commonly associated with industrialization: overcrowding, pollution,
communicable disease, etc. By late century, Ulster Protestants – particularly
Presbyterians – had become more convinced than ever that "Ulster is different
from the rest of Ireland", based on the indisputable facts that (1) whereas the
rest of Ireland was 80% or more Irish-Catholic, Ulster had a British-Protestant
majority, or near majority, with Presbyterians outnumbering Anglicans by far,
and (2) whereas the rest of Ireland remained largely agrarian, Ulster to a
significant degree had become industrialized. This culture of "separateness"
persisted into the 20th Century and drove the partition compromise of 1910-22.
Throughout all of Ireland in the 1760s, the long simmering tensions --
landlord versus tenant, rich versus poor, Catholic versus Presbyterian versus
Anglican -- began to surface, primarily in rural areas. Secret societies were
formed which became governments unto themselves. They ignored duly enacted law
and established their own agendas -- primarily anti-landlord, secondarily
anti-government and/or anti-tithe – which were enforced through organized
violence, principally against landlords and their allies. (The violence
euphemistically was called "land wars" by some, "agrarian outrages" by others.)
Membership tended to be from a single religion, but religious warfare did not
erupt until later in the century, when Catholics and Protestants began to
compete for leases. Public attention fell principally on the Catholic societies,
the "Whiteboys" and "Defenders", but Protestant societies, the "Hearts of Oak",
"Steelboys", and "Peep o' Day Boys", were equally effective.
Some policy makers thought there might be a partial legislative solution to
the unrest. In the 1760s, the "Patriot" movement led by Henry Gratton (an
affluent and pro-business Anglican), professing loyalty to the King but
demanding greater autonomy for Ireland plus concessions to Catholics, emerged as
an influential minority in the Irish Parliament. As a result of Gratton's
advocacy, a few of the Penal Laws were repealed in the 1770s.
The American Revolution erupted in 1776, triggering obvious comparisons
between the situation of the American colonies and that of Ireland. It also
forced the reassignment of British troops from Ireland to America. This led to
the formation of the "Irish Volunteers", a militia (consisting almost entirely
of well armed Anglicans) which ostensibly was formed to defend Ireland but which
was used adroitly by Gratton to intimidate the British government.
In 1782, while still negotiating a surrender in the American Revolutionary
War, England handed Gratton his greatest achievement. "Gratton's Parliament"
(backed by the armed "Irish Volunteers") persuaded the British government to
amend English law (including Poynings's Law) to give the Irish Parliament full
legislative independence, including the right to enact its own trade and tariff
policies. Conventional wisdom among Ascendancy gentlemen was that Ireland had
been transformed peacefully into a nearly autonomous "Protestant Nation", but
this was a gross exaggeration, since the Crown had retained all executive power,
including power over patronage, plus the right to veto legislation of the Irish
Parliament.
Legislative independence nevertheless was a triumph for the Protestant
Ascendancy, which had long sought greater legislative autonomy, particularly in
matter of trade. The Ascendancy thus reacted with pride and satisfaction which
manifested itself in visible signs of sovereignty such as an independent Bank of
Ireland, a separate Irish postal service, and new government buildings including
the Custom House and the Four Courts.
But independence for a Parliament responsive only to the Protestant
Ascendancy did little or nothing for the angry lower and middle classes, either
Presbyterian or Catholic. Presbyterian tenant-farmers, generally middle class,
had grievances over the mandatory tithe, certain penal laws, a wide variety of
landlord abuses, and a non-representative Irish Parliament. Poverty stricken
Catholics had all these grievances, and many more. Thus Catholics and less
affluent Presbyterians, who together made up 90% of the population, found
themselves on the same side of the major issues of the day: land reform,
Parliamentary reform, elimination of the tithe, and repeal of those penal laws
affecting both. Religious differences historically had precluded joint political
action, but some radical reformers were beginning to see potential in a
Catholic-Presbyterian political alliance.
In 1789, the French Revolution impacted Ireland like a bomb, igniting
existing tensions and pushing Ireland toward similar violent revolution. In
France, the peasant and middle classes had risen up to topple the government
(and to behead the king and queen), to oust the established Church (and to
confiscate its property), to abolish tithes, religious discrimination and
privilege, and to institute a democratic republic dedicated to liberty and
equality. (The French Revolution's first stage was widely admired; but its later
stages, particularly the infamous "Reign of Terror", were almost universally
deplored.) Now it was becoming clear that the status quo in Ireland could not be
maintained, and that radical change was inevitable.
Among intellectuals, Parliamentary reform topped the list of demands for
change. Not only were Catholics legally barred from serving, but only
freeholders (owners and life tenants in land) could vote, and voting districts
were not of equal size or population. Some voting districts -- called "pocket
boroughs" or "rotten boroughs" -- had only one or two eligible voters. Among 300
seats in Commons, a majority -- more than 150 seats -- were controlled by only
30 landowners. Ironically, this worked to benefit the Crown, which used
patronage jobs and pensions to induce the individuals in control -- called
"undertakers" -- to undertake to enact the Crown's agenda. At any one time,
between one-third and two-thirds of the Irish Parliament was receiving a salary
or pension from the Crown.
Theobald Wolf Tone, an Anglican of modest social standing and the founder of
radical republicanism in Ireland, was profoundly influenced by the French
Revolution. To Tone, the key to a better Ireland was Parliamentary reform (i.e.,
a popularly elected one-man-one-vote legislature), and the key to Parliamentary
reform was an alliance between Catholics and less affluent Presbyterians.
Ultimately, Tone's vision for Ireland was a democratic republic, patterned after
the post-revolutionary French Republic; it would be totally independent from
England, governed by a popularly elected one-man-one-vote type legislature, and
free from religious discrimination and preferences. In 1791, with the assistance
of Napper Tandy, Tone founded the Society of United Irishmen, which originally
was formed as a "debating society" peacefully advocating Protestant-Catholic
cooperation to achieve parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation. United
Irishmen quickly gained wide support from Ulster Presbyterians, and modest
support from some Catholics.
The post-revolution French government declared war on England in 1793. Hoping
to secure the loyalty of rebellious Catholics, the British government pressured
the reluctant Irish Parliament to repeal some penal laws and to grant Catholics
the right to vote* (1793).
But unrest did not subside. Instead it escalated in the form of sectarian
violence. The "Battle of the Diamond" (1795) near Armagh, which pitted
Presbyterian Peep o' Day Boys against Catholic Defenders, left 20 dead. That
same evening, Ulster Protestants formed the "Orange Order", a society of
affluent and middle class Protestants who pledged support for the Protestant
Ascendancy and confrontation with Catholics. Over the next few months, thousand
of Catholics were driven out of Ulster by widespread and systematic violence.
About 1794, Tone crossed over the line, converting from advocate of peaceful
Parliamentary reform to violent revolutionary. About the same time, the United
Irishmen became a para-military force. In 1796, Tone convinced France to invade
Ireland as part of its war effort against England. A French fleet carrying
14,000 troops set sail for Ireland, but as luck would have it, bad weather
prevented a landing, and the fleet returned to France.
All of the powder kegs now seemed ready to explode at once. An
anti-government revolution (ala the French Revolution) seemed imminent.
Religious warfare already had erupted at Diamond, and seemed likely to spread.
Rural violence against landlords was escalating. And a second French invasion of
Ireland was expected at any time.
The government responded with a campaign to disarm the populace (1797).
Initially the campaign was directed principally at Ulster Presbyterians --
Catholics already were legally prohibited from bearing arms -- but later it was
expanded to include all but a handful of counties. The campaign was conducted by
General Gerard Lake, who used brutal tactics with little or no restraint.
Suspects against whom little evidence existed, many of them innocent, were
flogged and tortured to force them to reveal information, hundreds were forced
into the British navy as slave laborers, and numerous houses were burned. Lake's
campaign was spectacularly successful in disarming the populace, particularly in
Ulster, but it also inspired rumors -- widely believed by Catholics -- that
disarmament was the first step in a joint campaign by the Orange Order and the
Irish government to solve the "Catholic problem" by massacring the entire
Catholic population of Ireland. Tone's followers shrewdly exploited the rumored
massacre to persuade some local Defender units to merge into, and became the
Catholic wing of, the Presbyterian dominated United Irishmen.
In 1798, Tone and the United Irishmen again persuaded France to invade
Ireland. The plan included coordination of the French invasion with a series of
local rebellions. When an informer disclosed the plot, the rebels were forced to
start early. The insurrection in Ulster, led by Henry Joy McCracken, was almost
entirely Presbyterian, while the ones in Dublin, Kildare, Carlow, Meath and
Queen's were nonsectarian. All of these risings were serious matters, but
because disarmament had been successful, all were efficiently quashed.
The rebellion in Wexford was far more serious, one of the bloodiest
confrontations in Irish history. Wexford was an unlikely prospect for
insurrection -- no more than 300 United Irishmen and Defenders were operating
there -- but violence erupted when Protestant Volunteers, directed to enforce
the disarmament order, began flogging Catholics and burning their homes even
before the date specified for surrendering arms. Then a Catholic killed a
soldier who had burned a barn, and government forces retaliated by burning down
another 160 houses. Fully believing that a massacre of Catholics was imminent,
Catholics rebelled. Led by Father John Murphy, and armed with little more than
pikes against government forces with muskets, the rebels initially took
Enniscorthy, then sought to expand into Wicklow. Mass atrocities occurred on
both sides. In the end, the rebels were routed at Vinegar Hill (1798). Some
historians regard Wexford as an extension of Tone's United Irish rebellion, but
elsewhere in Ireland, the perception was that Wexford was a Catholic war against
Protestants. This triggered bitter religious animosities, and destroyed (perhaps
forever) Tone's dream of a political alliance between Catholics and less
affluent Presbyterians.
The local uprisings all had already been suppressed when French warships
arrived (with Wolf Tone aboard) and were forced to surrender. Tone was captured,
convicted, and sentenced to death. Tone demanded to be shot while wearing his
uniform, like a soldier and prisoner of war; the government insisted on hanging
him, like a common criminal. He died in prison apparently from self inflicted
wounds, almost certainly a suicide.
Despite the effective suppression of the local risings, England's Prime
Minister, William Pitt, considered Irish unrest one of the greatest threats to
England in history. Thus he revived a long discarded idea. He sponsored
legislation (entitled "Act of Union") calling for the "union" (or merger) of
England and Ireland into a single "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland"
with a single Parliament. To garner Catholic support, Pitt promised Catholics
the right to sit in Parliament ("emancipation"); but out of 658 seats in the new
Parliament, Ireland would have only 100, and Catholics could expect to fill 70
to 75 seats at most.
Pitt's proposal was one of the most far reaching in Irish history. If
adopted, it would totally reverse the Gratton Parliament's most popular
achievement, legislative independence. Gratton vigorously opposed union, as did
Ulster Presbyterians, the business community, parish priests and nationalists;
in favor were the British government, Catholic bishops and absentee landlords.
The proposal certainly would have failed in a popular vote or in a
representative parliament, but the vote fell to the non-representative Irish
Parliament.
When the "Act of Union" was voted on the first time (1799), it failed by only
five votes; later (1800), after Pitt's deputy in Ireland had bribed some members
by offering peerages and lifetime seats in the British House of Lords, the
measure passed the all-Protestant Irish Parliament, and was quickly ratified by
the English Parliament. In a betrayal of Catholics, Pitt's promise of Catholic
emancipation was defeated in a separate follow-up vote, leading Pitt to resign.
After only eighteen years as a semi-autonomous country, Ireland, by the vote of
its own Parliament, had been subsumed into England.
END NOTES TO CHAPTER 8.
*A follow up bill granting Catholics the right to sit in Parliament
("emancipation") failed, however.
Ch. 9. The Age of Daniel O'Connell (1801-45).
Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), a Catholic advocate of non-violent and lawful
political action, emerged in the early 1800s as the sole leader of the great
masses of peasant and middle class Catholics, who comprised the vast majority of
the Irish population. O'Connell dominated Irish history and politics in the
first half of the 19th Century like no other single person ever had dominated a
half century. This indeed was the "Age of Daniel O'Connell".
O'Connell's principal achievement was organizing previously dispirited
Catholics into an extraordinary political machine which impacted England (and
Ireland) for almost 100 years. Long after his death, the political machine was
still able to exert disproportionate influence in the British Parliament,
particularly when neither major party had the votes to form a government, or
pass controversial legislation, without the Catholic voting block.
The emergence of a Catholic leader provides stark contrast to 18th Century
Irish history, which is essentially the story of Protestants giants -- Wolf
Tone, Henry Gratton, and Jonathan Swift -- agitating both peacefully and
violently for greater independence from England, and for greater civil rights
for the oppressed. However, within a few years after the Union, Presbyterians*
and Anglicans alike had become pillars of the Union and had virtually
disappeared from history books.
O'Connell first attracted attention as leader of an unsuccessful 1804-07
movement for "emancipation". The issue: Even though Catholics had been granted
the right to vote in 1793, they still were prohibited by law from serving in
Parliament. "Emancipation" was the term given to repeal of this prohibition,
which (as the most notorious of the remaining penal laws) held great symbolic
significance**.
O'Connell made a genuine impact in 1823 when he founded the "Catholic
Association". Earlier Catholic societies had been for the affluent and the
elite, but the Catholic Association aimed for, and actually attained, grass
roots mass membership. It used parish priests to solicit members, and most
important of all, it charged a membership fee of one penny per month, which
became known as "catholic rent." The amount was so low that even the poorest
could afford it, but for their penny, the masses soon came to believe in the
association as an empowering institution in which they had a genuine stake.
By 1826, O'Connell's Catholic Association began to flex previously unused
Catholic muscle. The first goal, naturally, was emancipation. The association
enacted a policy to actively oppose, and vote en mass against, any candidate who
was anti-emancipation, or who joined the cabinet of an anti-emancipation
government. In the general elections of 1826, as the result of an impressive
get-out-the-vote drive funded by Catholic rents and supported by many priests,
four sitting anti-emancipation members of Parliament were turned out and
replaced by pro-emancipation Protestants. O'Connell immediately began to
fine-tune his strategy for a truly massive campaign in the next general
election.
Before the next general election arrived, however, Vesey Fitzgerald, who had
represented Clare in Parliament for ten years, was appointed to the cabinet.
Under the law at that time, he was required to stand for reelection at a special
election in 1928. Fitzgerald personally was pro-emancipation, and certainly no
enemy of Catholics, but he had joined a government that was anti-emancipation,
thereby requiring the Association, as a matter of policy, to oppose him.
Fitzgerald was so strong that O'Connell could not find any Protestant to run
against him. O'Connell therefore declared himself a candidate, thus exploiting a
loophole in the election law. Specifically, although the law clearly prohibited
Catholics from being sworn in as a Member of Parliament, it did not explicitly
prohibit Catholics from filing as a candidate and running for election.
The election results shocked Parliament. O'Connell won by more than a two to
one margin (2,057 to 982) over the well respected Fitzgerald, largely because of
O'Connell's now highly effective political machine.
Parliament reacted quickly. To avoid the disorders that were expected to
follow its refusal to seat O'Connell, Parliament in 1829 passed legislation that
not only granted Catholic Emancipation, but repealed virtually all of the
remaining Penal Laws as well.
As a member of Parliament, O'Connell played a significant role in several
modest reforms for Ireland. The tithe was restructured as a less ideologically
offensive rental charge, the number of eligible voters was expanded, corruption
in municipal government was addressed, and some modest land reforms were
enacted. Overall, though, O'Connell was disappointed at how little he could
achieve with his bloc of Irish votes in Commons.
Thus in 1837, O'Connell launched his second great agitation: a grass roots
campaign to repeal the Act of Union of 1800. Now a proven organizational genius
and compelling orator, O'Connell devised his campaign strategy around "monster"
grass roots political demonstrations, which were to be both non-violent and in
full conformity with law. O'Connell believed these demonstrations would call
worldwide attention to the injustice of the bribe infected vote in 1800 on the
Act of Union, and pressure Parliament into "Repeal".
The demonstrations were enormous, and indeed caught the attention of the
government. During 1843, more than 40 monster meetings were held and many
attracted crowds in excess of 100,000. One demonstration, at Tara, drew 250,000.
As Repeal fever approached its peak, O'Connell scheduled what was to be the
largest demonstration of all, at Clontarf in October 1843. Only a few hours
before the Clontarf demonstration, however, the government issued an order
banning the protest. O'Connell thus faced a dilemma by virtue of his own long
held insistence that all demonstrations be in full conformity with law.
Much to the dismay of his militant young supporters -- who were called "Young
Ireland" -- O'Connell called off the demonstration. Unfortunately for O'Connell,
then age 68, this triggered acrimonious debates during which the young militants
challenged O'Connell on a variety of long suppressed but highly divisive issues,
including whether violence ever could be justified. O'Connell's Catholic
Association already was on the verge of fracture when the Great Hunger
(1845-48), a.k.a. potato famine, diverted attention away from grass roots
politics. Four years after Clontarf, in 1847, O'Connell was dead at age 72.
O'Connell was a pioneer in using lawful and non-violent demonstrations to
energize and organize his followers. Later advocates of peaceful protest --
Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King -- borrowed his tactics, but they also
learned from his experience that a protest movement cannot be so dedicated to
conforming with law that it acquiesces in a government declaration that a
peaceful protest is illegal. If demonstrations (O'Connell's principal weapon)
always had to be lawful, the government could and would always win, simply by
banning demonstrations.
END NOTES TO CHAPTER 9.
*The mystery is what happened to change attitudes among Ulster Presbyterians,
those 1795-99 firebrands, followers of Henry Joy McCracken, who advocated a
republic similar to revolutionary France, who demanded independence from, not
union with England, who flocked to the Society of United Irishman and took arms
in rebellion against the British, who supported Wolf Tone when he twice invited
France to invade Ireland, and who were the most vigorous opponents of the Act of
Union? Perhaps they were horrified by the Reign of Terror atrocities in the
latter stages of the French Revolution. Perhaps they felt Tone went too far in
inviting France to invade Ireland. Perhaps it was the growing prosperity of
Ulster. Whatever the reason, by 1820 Ulster Presbyterians had settled
comfortably into the Union. Indeed, when Daniel O'Connell started a new movement
in the 1830s to repeal the Act of Union, he received virtually no support from
those northern Presbyterians whose fathers had been United Irishmen.
**Some observers regarded "emancipation" as a non-substantive distraction
from more serious economic issues, since in the unreformed Parliament of that
era, few Catholics ever could be elected, and similar representation could be
achieved by electing pro-Catholic Protestants. These commentators overlook the
value of the issue in energizing and organizing Catholics.
Ch. 10. An Gorta Mor, a.k.a Great Hunger, a.k.a Potato Famine
(1845-1849).
The holocaust formerly called "Potato Famine" was not a genuine "famine" at
all, because only the potato crop was affected, while the vast majority of
farmland was planted to other crops and foodstuffs which were grown in
sufficient quantities -- or at least nearly sufficient quantities* -- to feed
the populace. Hence the human tragedy -- one million dead -- is now more
accurately called the "Great Hunger" ("An Gorta Mor" in Irish/Gaelic). Whatever
it is called, the disaster resulted from (1) the fungus that totally ravaged the
potato crop in 1845, 1846 and 1848, and partially ravaged it in 1847, and (2)
government indifference. It not only devastated the Irish people of 1845-49, it
had profound long term effects on Ireland, effects that remain to this day.
Specifically:
--Before the Great Hunger, the population of Ireland was 8.5 million.
Afterwards, the population was only 6.5 million, a decline of two million
(23.5%) in four years. About half of the decline was due to death by starvation
or some associated disease (cholera, typhus) which became fatal in the
conditions of malnutrition. The other half of the population decline was due to
emigration, principally to the United States, but even among those officially
classified as "emigrants", a staggering number actually died at sea on the
"coffin ships"**. Even after the famine, emigration continued, as Irish newly
arrived in the United States urged family and friends to follow them. By 1881,
the Irish population had declined to 5 million; by 1921 (partition), to slightly
over 4 million.
--Before the Hunger, Gaelic was the principal language among Catholics.
Afterwards, English became the predominant language, largely because death and
emigration hit hardest in the poorest areas where Gaelic was most common; the
Gaelic speaking Counties of Mayo and Kerry, for example, lost half their
populations.
--Before the Hunger, early marriages and large families were integral to
Irish culture. Afterwards, late marriages and smaller families became the norm.
It became an axiom that man should not marry and have children until he had
saved sufficient money to weather a disaster.
--The trend toward late marriage dove-tailed with a "devotional revolution"
characterized by greater compliance strict Catholic teaching on sexual morality,
increased attendance at Catholic mass, expanded church building, and a dramatic
increase in the number of priests and nuns.
–Before the Hunger, a full 45% of farmland was held in inefficient farms of 5
acres or less, while only 7% was in farms of 30 acres or more. Afterwards, sub-5
acre farms dropped to 15%, while the more efficient farms of 30 acres or more
increased to 26%. Thus the Hunger forced a much more efficient agricultural
economy, but at the terrible price of one million dead and even more emigrated.
--Before the Great Hunger, political sentiment ran towards abstract ideas,
such as repeal of the Union. Afterwards, the electorate focused on "bread and
butter" issues such as agrarian reform.
The cause of the crop failures, we now know, was a fungus called phytophthora
infestans, also known as potato blight. It had struck the eastern seaboard of
the United States and Canada in 1842, and England in 1845, but had caused no
great distress. In Ireland, however, it spelled disaster. In September 1845, the
potato blight hit Waterford and Wexford, then spread rapidly until about half
the island was affected. It hit hard again in 1846, less hard in 1847, then
again destroyed the crop in 1848.
What is shocking about the famine is that throughout this entire four year
period of starvation, Ireland was exporting enormous quantities of food. Indeed,
up to 75% of the soil was devoted to wheat, oats, barley and other crops which
were grown for export, and which were actually exported, all while the populace
starved.
The problem was that about half the population -- all wretchedly poor --
worked on farms not for cash wages, but for the right to grow potatoes on tiny
plots. They lived on a subsistence diet consisting almost exclusively of
potatoes and milk, with a herring once or twice a year. When the potato crop
failed, these peasants had neither food for their families, nor cash to buy
other food***. Initially, only the poor died, victims of starvation. Then as
typically happens in conditions of starvation, epidemics of typhus and cholera
broke out, felling the affluent along with the poor. In toto, about one million
died.
When the first signs of the crop failure appeared in 1845, Britain's Tory
government under Prime Minister Robert Peel took modest initiatives to alleviate
the distress. It paid half the cost of jobs for about 140,000 family heads on
public works, which (to protect English business) were required by law to be
non-productive, and it matched local voluntary contributions to hunger relief.
It also imported large quantities of Indian corn and meal from the United
States; incredibly, however, the government refused to distribute this food
free, instead placing it on the market at low prices to prevent artificial
increases in food prices.
Peel firmly opposed more radical measures. The starvation very likely could
have been averted entirely by legislation prohibiting the export of food from
Ireland; and any hardship on growers could have been avoided by legislation
authorizing purchase of their grain using borrowed money, with repayment to be
made over a period of years from increased agricultural taxes. But feeding the
populace by interfering with exports was never seriously considered by Peel's
government, in part because the expense might fall on the growers and/or the
public treasury. Instead, Peel used the famine as an opportunity to push through
his favored but controversial proposal: Repeal of the protectionist "corn laws",
which imposed stiff tariffs on grain (including but not limited to corn) brought
in from outside the United Kingdom. Repeal of the "corn laws" reduced food
prices (as Peel intended), but did nothing to alleviate the hunger, since the
starving poor could not afford food whatever the price.
The controversial repeal of the "corn laws" helped topple Peel's Tory
government in June 1846. The Tories were replaced by an even less compassionate
Whig government under Lord John Russell, who delegated the potato blight problem
to Charles Trevelyan, the career civil service Head of Treasury. At this point,
although people were hungry, no one yet had died. But the Whigs (and Trevelyan
personally) were committed to the trendy Manchester school of economics, which
regarded the suffering of the poor as part of the natural order of things, and
prohibited government meddling in the operation of otherwise free markets. The
Whig government decided that in the event of another crop failure, there would
be no direct relief from the British treasury; instead, relief would be limited
to public works jobs funded entirely by Irish self-taxation.
There was indeed a second failure, in autumn 1846, and this time it was
complete. Making matters worse, the winter of 1846-47 was the harshest in living
memory. Now the dying began. The suffering reached its peak in February 1847,
when hundreds of thousands of homeless, freezing and starving peasants left the
farms for the towns, hoping for employment in public works, which already had
hired 500,000 family heads. Cholera and typhus then broke out, and some died
from disease, some of starvation, and some froze to death, hundreds of thousands
in all. Finally, the Whig government was forced to relent and extend some direct
aid through the "Soup Kitchen Act" providing free soup to the starving. This was
augmented by charity from the Quakers and other private groups. The aid was too
little and too late, as hundreds of thousands more perished, and Ireland
literally ran out of coffins. When sailing weather arrived, panic emigration
started in earnest.
Blight hit less hard in the autumn of 1847, but this simply furnished the
British government with a convenient excuse for closing down the soup kitchens.
Trevelyan wrote: "The only way to prevent people from becoming habitually
dependent on the government is to bring operations to a close" [1846] "too much
has been done for the people. . . we must now try what independent exertion can
do" [1847]. He announced that the government had already done everything it was
going to do, even if blight and starvation returned.
Blight indeed did return with the harvest of October 1848, and it destroyed
virtually the entire potato crop. And with no government assistance at all,
1848-49 proved to be just as bad, if not worse, 1846-47. Hundreds of thousands
more perished, routinely falling dead on the streets; and in the extreme
conditions of starvation and illness, their bodies sometimes were left unburied
for weeks at a time. One road inspector reported burying 140 corpses scattered
along his route. The magnitude of fatalities was so overwhelming that
authorities were unable to record the precise number of deaths, but fatalities
certainly approached one million.
Finally, with the 1849 harvest, the potato blight and the famine were over.
But Irish culture would never be the same. Long standing animosity towards
England now became a genuine hatred (called "Anglophobia" by some commentators).
Further, a grim "never again" mentality, similar to that of Jewish survivors of
Auschwitz a century later, took root among famine survivors who felt
embarrassment over a culture that allowed family members to die passively rather
than forcibly expropriate food grown on Irish land which (prior to the British)
was the common property of society. In the century that followed, otherwise law
abiding Irishmen found themselves supporting anti-British terrorist groups, such
as the IRA.
In retrospect, no one can be blamed for the potato blight itself, which like
earthquake or flood, was a natural disaster; but the British response was
wrongheaded, indifferent and utterly devoid of common sense and compassion. The
tragedy likely could have been avoided entirely by appropriate legislation which
fed the populace with food grown for export. Some commentators have equated the
government's non-action with genocide, but a better analysis would be a callous
indifference towards an unsupportive ethnic group long perceived as less than
100% human, coupled with an unwillingness to spend taxpayer money on such
undeserving and ungrateful people.
END NOTES TO CHAPTER 10.
*Experts agree that one acre can sustain 2 people if planted to wheat, or 4
people if planted to potatoes. Ireland had 6,000,000 tillable acres in 1845, on
the eve of the Hunger. Professor Edmund Curtis (in A History of Ireland) states
that 75% (4,500 acres) was planted to crops other than potatoes, while Professor
Cormac O'Grada (in The Great Irish Famine) estimates two-thirds (4,000 acres).
If Curtis' 4,500 acres is accepted, there was grown enough non-potato food for 9
million people, or 500,000 more than the population, and this does not even
include fish taken from the sea or the minimal percent of the potato crop which
survived. If O'Grada's 4,000 acres is accepted, there was grown enough food for
8 million people, about 500,000 fewer than the 1845 population, but this does
not include fish from the sea or the unaffected potatoes. It must be remembered,
however, that distribution is never perfect - there always will be some who
discard surplus food while others starve.
**On the seven week ocean voyage to the United States and Canada, the ships'
crews typically protected themselves from cholera, which was rampant in Ireland,
by nailing the ships' holds shut to keep the emigrants in the unbelievably
crowded and unhealthy squalor below board. Based on Canadian statistics, it is
estimated that in these unhealthy conditions, about 20% of passengers died at
sea, while another 20% arrived sick with fever, so sick that they probably died
within weeks. Hence the name "coffin ships".
***Food from Britain and elsewhere in Europe certainly would have found its
way to Ireland if the starving peasants had had the cash to purchase it. But the
peasants had no cash, so they died. For this reason, some historians and
economists regard the Irish holocaust as more of a poverty crisis than a food
crisis.
Ch. 11. Land Reform: Davitt and Parnell (1850-1891).
After the devastating famine, lower and middle class Irish-Catholics
understandably became obsessed with mere survival. They also became bitterly
divided over the merits of peaceful politics. The non-violent ("constitutional")
philosophy of O'Connell -- that reform could be achieved through Parliamentary
action -- lost credibility*, which is hardly surprising given Parliament's
callous indifference during the famine. Disillusioned pacifists tended to seek
refuge in the Catholic Church, which attained more influence than it had enjoyed
for centuries, while a more violent ("revolutionary" or "physical force")
segment of Irish society gained support; they argued that the British government
would never respond to "constitutional" measures, and advocated violence to
effectuate reform. Then in 1878 a major farm crisis revived demands for genuine
land reform, which became a surprising reality through an alliance
between"constitutional" politics (under Charles Stewart Parnell) and
"revolutionary" intimidation of landlords (under Michael Davitt).
The violent element of society was exemplified by a handful of zealous
separatists, adherents of Wolf Tone who called themselves "Republicans". These
revolutionaries advocated an Irish Republic totally separate and independent
from England, to be achieved by any means required, including physical force.
Even during the height of the famine (1848), a group called Young Ireland --
mostly former O'Connell supporters disillusioned over the failure of working
within the law -- had mounted an unsuccessful "war of independence". One of the
rebels, James Stephens (a Protestant), avoided prison by faking his own funeral
and fleeing to France; he returned to reorganize Young Ireland into the "Fenian"
movement (1858), with one branch in Ireland (called the Irish Republican
Brotherhood, or "IRB") and another in the United States (called the Fenian
Brotherhood, later Clan na Gael). The Fenian strategy was to prepare secretly
for an armed rebellion to be launched when Britain found itself in a
debilitating war or otherwise vulnerable. While some Fenians were willing to
exploit issues such as land reform to broaden support for independence, the true
believers felt such issues were distractions. In 1867, the Fenians killed 30
Londoners while blowing up the outer wall of the Clerkenwell prison in an
unsuccessful prison break attempt; and they sponsored uprisings in 1865 and
1867. Although these Fenian endeavors were uniformly unsuccessful, they kept
alive the flame of revolutionary nationalism, not to mention the IRB itself.
Indeed, when finally the events of 1916-22 unfolded -- the Easter Rising, the
revolutionary government of Sinn Fein, the "troubles", civil war, and near
independence but with partition -- it was the Fenian IRB that violently forced
the issues. In James Stephens' own lifetime, however, the Fenians were
ineffectual except in garnering publicity.
The Fenians' failed risings of 1865 and 1867 had one unintended consequence.
In 1869, legislation was enacted abolishing the tithe and repealing the laws
that "established" the Anglican Church as the official Church of Ireland (1869).
Prime Minister William Gladstone later acknowledged that the Fenians' violent
activities precipitated the measure.
The Fenians' emphasis on violence was dramatically at odds with O'Connell's
insistence on peaceful political activity within the law, even though both
movements sought the same goal: greater independence from England. From this
conflict emerged a new two-pronged concept, called the "New Departure", under
which the "physical force" (violence-tolerant) and "constitutional"
(non-violent) factions would not fight one another, but would cautiously
cooperate, each in its own sphere, towards the common goal.
Ironically, agricultural land reform -- the issue which was regarded as a
distraction by hard core Fenians, but which had obsessed the populace since the
17th Century confiscations -- became the focus of the "New Departure" strategy.
In the winter of 1878-79, an economic crisis -- brought on by crop failures,
falling crop prices, and wet weather -- threatened the rural population with a
disaster comparable to the famine. It brought to the fore Michael Davitt, a
Fenian Catholic, who formed an alliance with Charles Stewart Parnell, a
pro-Catholic legislator who was both a landlord and a Protestant, to effectuate
comprehensive land reform in Ireland. Davitt and Parnell made strange
bedfellows.
Michael Davitt (1846-1906) was the working class son of a tenant farmer who
had been evicted from his Mayo farm during the famine because his potato crop
failed and he could not pay his rent. The family moved to Lankershire, England,
where at the age of 11 Michael lost his right arm in a machine while working in
a cotton mill. A Catholic who was taught by a Wesleyan schoolteacher, he
accepted religious diversity as a way of life and identified with all workers,
English and Irish alike. Upon returning to Ireland, he became a leader in the
IRB, where his Fenian activities earned him a 15 year prison sentence, of which
he served seven. Unlike the more zealous Fenians, who saw land reform as a
distraction from the real issue of independence, Davitt had genuine concern for
the tenant farmers, and made agricultural land reform his overriding issue. In
1879, two years after his release from prison (and in the midst of the farm
crisis of 1878-79), he founded the National Land League, which became the less
respectable prong of the "New Departure" dual approach to agricultural land
reform, i.e., the Land League was not above using intimidation and threats of
violence.
To achieve what he regarded as justice for tenant farmers, Davitt's Land
League used some of O'Connell's perfectly legal methods -- mass meetings and
brass bands -- plus societal ostracism. Occasionally, in the tradition of the
Whiteboys and the Defenders, it used intimidation and violence or threats of
violence. The League would identify landlords who had been guilty of "abuses" --
unfair evictions or rack-renting -- then focus public attention on these
landlords, and organize the entire community to refuse them all goods and
services, including labor to work the farm. "Grabbers" -- persons who became the
new tenant farmer after an unfair eviction -- were ostracized. In one
spectacularly successful example, the League used these tactics to bring one
absentee landlord from Mayo to his knees. Eventually, the landlord harvested his
crop, but only after bringing in 50 laborers at a cost ten times the value of
the crop. The landlord's on-site agent was named "Boycott", whose name was added
to the dictionary to describe the League's tactics. The Land League had other
impressive successes, but absent the emergence of Parnell as their champion in
Parliament, it is unlikely that the Land League ever could have effectuated
permanent or widespread reform.
Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) was by inheritance an affluent Protestant
landlord, but his heritage was hardly pro-British. On his fathers' side, his
great grandfather, an incorruptible member of the 1800 Irish Parliament, had
voted against the Union. On his mother's side, his ancestors had emigrated from
Belfast to America in the 1770s, and his grandfather had fought against England
in the War of 1812. An intransigent nationalist, he was elected to the British
Parliament in 1875 from a largely Catholic district in Meath. Initially, he made
his name by obstructing other legislation to gain consideration of home rule for
Ireland. Then Davitt persuaded him to become the parliamentary champion of land
reform, i.e., the second prong of the Davitt's New Departure strategy.
Paradoxically, then, this affluent Protestant landlord became the leader of the
land reform movement, as well as the Home Rule movement. To the great mass of
peasant and middle class citizens, Catholic and Presbyterian alike, he shortly
became one of the most beloved men in Ireland. Among affluent Protestants, of
course, he was considered a traitor to his class. In 1880, with massive grass
roots assistance from Davitt's Land League, a slate of Parnell supporters was
elected to Parliament, and Parnell supplanted Isaac Butt as chairman of the
Irish party.
The Davitt-Parnell alliance paid dividends almost immediately. Prodded by
Parnell, Gladstone and his Liberal government successfully pushed through the
Land Act of 1881, incorporating the long standing demands of tenant farmers
known as the "three Fs" (1) "fair rents" (legal review of rent fairness by an
independent tribunal), (2) "fixity of tenure" (protection against arbitrary
eviction), and (3) "freedom of sale" (the right of a tenant farmer to transfer
or sell his leasehold in the farm). The 1881 Act paved the way for additional
reforms in 1891 and 1896; and much later, after Parnell, Davitt and Gladstone
were all dead, the Wyndham land act (1906) completed the reforms by permitting
tenants to purchase their farms on easy terms over 68 years, while offering a
bonus to selling landlords. The vast majority of Irishmen depended on farming
for their livelihood, and for them it is virtually impossible to overemphasize
the importance of these victories, particularly the 1881 Act. For over 270 years
they had been agitating unsuccessfully for land reform. Now the New Departure,
with Davitt and Parnell playing key roles, won had for Irish who worked the
land, Catholics and Presbyterians alike, their first genuine bread-and-butter
victory in 270 years.
Now the political winds began to shift strongly in Parnell's favor.
Parliament enacted a "franchise act" expanding the electorate throughout
Britain; in Ireland, it added some 500,000 new voters to the rolls, most of whom
were less affluent Catholics who supported Parnell. And since land reform had
largely been achieved, the Land League permitted itself to be transformed into a
highly efficient political machine under Parnell's control.
Parnell returned to his earlier goal: A subordinate ("Home Rule") parliament
for Ireland. The idea was not new. It had been raised in the 1840s both by
O'Connell and by Young Ireland, and had been pursued unsuccessfully by Isaac
Butt (Parnell's predecessor as leader of the Irish Party). In the 1880s was
certain to be killed by the House of Lords. Nonetheless, with Parnell behind it,
Home Rule became the highly divisive and defining issue of the 1885 election.
Conservatives opposed it as the first step towards breaking up the empire, but
the most passionate resistance came from Protestants, particularly Ulster
Presbyterians, because any Home Rule Parliament was certain to be dominated by
Catholics. The election inflamed dormant religious antagonisms, polarizing
anti-Home Rule "Unionists" (generally Protestant) from pro-Home Rule
"Nationalists" (generally Catholic), a split that eventually (1910) evolved into
private armies. But in 1885, Parnell's Irish party won 86 seats, exactly the
separation between Liberals (335) and Conservatives (249). A deal was struck:
Gladstone announced support for Home Rule, and with Irish support became prime
minister for the third time. But Gladstone's Liberal Party split over his 1886
Home Rule Bill, and it was defeated in Commons, a defeat that was widely viewed
as a temporary postponement.
Parnell seemed politically invincible until 1890, when a divorce court
revealed that he had been "living in sin" with the wife of William Henry O'Shea.
Gladstone forced the Irish party to choose between Parnell's leadership and his
own support for a second Home Rule bill. A majority in the Irish Party, and the
Catholic bishops, turned against Parnell, who took his case to the country, but
in doing so he overburdened his precarious health and died soon after.
Gladstone's second Home Rule passed the House of Commons but was killed in the
House of Lords (1893). Parliament (but not the Irish Party) then placed Home
Rule on the back burner.
With the fall of Parnell and the failure of Home Rule, the passion went out
of Irish politics, and there ensued a 20 year period of tranquility plus modest
progress for Ireland (1890-1910). After considerable infighting, leadership of
the Irish party eventually fell to the docile John Redmond, while successive
British governments adopted the policy of placating Ireland in an attempt to
"kill Home Rule with kindness". The government spent extraordinary sums in
Ireland on two new colleges, plus public works projects such as a railroad to
western Ireland. Most importantly, the government passed the final piece of
comprehensive land reform, the aforementioned Wyndham Land Act (1903), which
permitted tenants to purchase their farms on easy terms over 68 years.
In abandoning politics and rebellion, the Irish populace turned to a
nostalgic study of "Irish Ireland", an exploration of their ethnic and national
identity. The Gaelic League was founded in 1893 by Douglas Hyde, later President
of the Irish Free State, to revive the Gaelic language and culture. The Gaelic
Athletic Association, formed in 1884, promoted traditional Irish games --
hurling and Irish football -- in place of "foreign" games. William Butler Yeats,
acknowledged as the greatest English language poet of his era, spearheaded a
literary revival emphasizing Irish roots and national identity. A series of
periodicals advocated a return to Gaelic roots. None of this was overtly
political, yet it dove-tailed with the trendy new concept among political
scientists that a separate cultural identity justified carving new states out of
existing larger states. Thus this "Irish Ireland" movement later became a
critical factor in turning world opinion in favor of Ireland in its quest for
independence.
One of the few overtly political manifestations of the "Irish Ireland"
movement was the formation of Sinn Fein ("we ourselves") in 1905 by Arthur
Griffith (1872-1922). Sinn Fein was primarily an Irish nationalist movement, but
it also functioned as a minor and largely unsuccessful political party. Under
Griffith's direction, it advocated a dual monarchy along Austro-Hungarian lines,
all to be achieved by passive resistance rather than physical force. Meanwhile,
the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) was infiltrating the nationalist and
separatist groups, including Sinn Fein, still waiting for the opportunity to
foment rebellion if England should find itself in a debilitating war.
END NOTES TO CHAPTER 11.
* Disillusionment over the legislative process (vis-a-vis violent revolution)
further skyrocketed after the 1852 election. A slate of candidates ran on a
"Tenant Right" agenda, pledging to vote as a block and to refuse to serve in any
cabinet not pledged to "Tenant Right". When 48 of them were elected, they joined
other Irish members (the so-called "Pope's brass band") to help topple Lord
Derby's Tory government, but then two of them -- John Sadleir and William Keogh
-- broke their pledge and took lucrative cabinet positions in Lord Aberdeen's
new government, which did not support Tenant Right. Cynicism only increased
subsequently when Keogh committed suicide, and Sadleir was convicted of fraud in
an unrelated case.
Ch. 12. The Easter Rising and Independence, But With Partition (1910-32).
The 20 year period of tranquility (1890-1910) -- with England "killing Home
Rule with kindness" and Ireland cooperating with England -- proved to be the
calm before the storm. In the next dozen years, a series of earth shaking events
exploded with bewildering speed: World War I, the Easter Rising, Sinn Fein's
revolutionary government, the Anglo-Irish guerilla war, the Treaty granting
independence but with partition, and the Irish Civil War.
The era began with the 1910 elections, when neither the Liberal Party nor the
Tories won enough seats to form a government without votes from Redmond's Irish
party. Once again (as in 1885) a deal was struck. Redmond's Irish party cast
their votes in favor of the Liberal, Herbert Asquith, for Prime Minister, and he
then was able to form a coalition government. In turn, the new government agreed
to force through Parliament a bill giving Ireland a separate Home Rule
Parliament in Dublin with relatively modest powers over local issues.
Since the electorate was 75% Catholic, the proposed Home Rule Parliament
naturally would be dominated by Catholics. It followed that Irish Protestants,
who (on this issue) were called "unionists", continued their passionate
resistance to Home Rule, which they characterized as "Rome Rule". Opposition was
particularly strong among Ulster Presbyterians, who constituted a majority in
the northeast. Legislatively, the overriding priority of unionists was to defeat
Home Rule entirely; but among Ulster Presbyterians, there was a fallback
position, to exclude Ulster, or some part of it*, through partition.
Protestant-unionists found a champion in Edward Carson, a Tory Member of
Parliament ("M.P.") from Dublin. Carson's only true goal was to defeat Home Rule
entirely, but he urged the exclusion of Ulster as a ploy to split the pro-Home
Rule voting bloc. Then Ulster unionists, to protect against legislative failure,
formed an armed paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteers, to wage war against
the proposed new government unless it excluded Ulster. Naturally, supporters of
Home Rule -- with the IRB playing a major role -- formed their own paramilitary
group, the Irish Volunteers, to counteract the Ulster Volunteers. Ireland seemed
to be drifting towards civil war, and Redmond came under increasing pressure to
agree to the exclusion of Ulster from Home Rule.
World War I broke out in August 1914, pitting Germany (and its allies)
against Great Britain (and its allies). Britain quickly realized that Irish Home
Rule was not its most pressing issue. Home Rule legislation was quickly enacted,
and placed on the statute books, but with provisos that the effective date was
postponed (1) until after the war, and (2) until after a vote on some form of
Ulster opt-out amendment to be drafted later. Redmond's Irish party, and most
Irishmen, supported the English war effort, with 150,000 Irishmen voluntarily
enlisting in the British army. But a significant minority opposed the war, and
soon 15,000 anti-war (and anti-British) troops under Eoin MacNeill, a respected
scholar and Gaelic Leaguer, split off from the main body of Irish Volunteers.
Postponement of Home Rule hardened attitudes, and Home Rule supporters began
to demand full or nearly full independence, rather than the limited autonomy
provided in the 1914 legislation. For the IRB, meanwhile, Britain's war with
Germany was the opportunity it had been awaiting for 50 years. The IRB
leadership -- including Padraic Pearse, Joseph Plunkett and Eamon Ceannt –
decided to mount an armed insurrection, even though it might be doomed to
failure. For its troops, the IRB expected to use MacNeill's 15,000 Irish
Volunteers, but this plan was seriously flawed because MacNeill, who had long
insisted that any rising have good prospects for success, had to be excluded
from IRB planning. For additional troops, the IRB formed an alliance with James
Connolly's militant Citizen Army, which arose from the 1913 Dublin strike and
lockout of 24,000 workers, and which fused Irish nationalism with Marxist
concepts of class struggle and workers rights. On behalf of the IRB, Roger
Casement traveled to Germany seeking military assistance, but his efforts
failed.
The IRB leadership eventually came to realize that their insurrection had no
chance of success in military terms. But Pearse, a poet and Gaelic scholar,
believed that a rebirth of Irish nationalism required "blood sacrifice," the
making of martyrs each generation, and he was willing to give his own life in
the insurrection to achieve that end.
Shortly before Easter 1916, the IRB leaders issued orders to the Irish
Volunteers to begin the insurrection. When MacNeill learned of the order, he
issued an order countermanding it. Thereafter, "Counter-countermanding orders"
were issued by the IRB leadership.
The Rising was intended to commence on Easter Sunday, and to be nationwide,
but due to confusion over the orders and countermanding orders, it began on
Easter Monday (April 24, 1916) and was largely confined to Dublin. Proclaiming
the existence of an Irish Republic, the rebels, 1600 strong, seized and held a
number of public buildings, including the General Post Office on Sackville
Street, which became command headquarters. Originally, the British fell back in
surprise at such an audacious and obviously doomed rebellion, but they soon
brought in reinforcements and methodically began to pound the rebels into
submission. The fighting lasted five days, during which British forces suffered
about 500 casualties, including 112 dead. The rebels surrendered on April 29.
Irish and British newspapers reported that the Rising had been sponsored by
Sinn Fein. This was erroneous. The Rising was sponsored by the IRB, and Sinn
Fein had nothing to do with it, although some of the rebels may have been
affiliated with Sinn Fein.
Four days later, the executions began, secretly, and after abbreviated and
secret trials. By May 10, eleven days after the surrender, 15 of the rebels had
been shot, including Pearse, whose execution won him the martyrdom that he had
sought, and Connolly, who was tied to a chair because his wounds prevented him
from standing before the firing squad. Martial law was imposed, during which a
number of innocent civilians were shot, including Francis Skeffington, a lovable
character and pacifist who had witnessed a British soldier shoot an unarmed boy,
but who otherwise was totally unconnected with the Rising.
Originally, the Rising was highly unpopular with the citizenry. Shoppers
derisively jeered the rebels as they were marched off to jail, and newspapers
expressed shock, horror and dismay. And with 112 British troops dead, no one
could have been surprised by the executions. But then, almost inexplicably, the
quick executions, after brief trials without customary legal safeguards or
appeals, caused the national mood to swing in favor of the rebels. One key
factor was George Bernard Shaw's persuasive observation that the rebels were not
traitors to Mother England (as charged in the trials), but rather were
"prisoners of war" in a 750 year on-going war against England. Another factor
was M.P. John Dillon's address to Parliament commending the rebels for their
clean fight and suggesting his support. The heavy handed enforcement of martial
law by 40,000 troops, and above all Britain's clumsy threat of involuntary
conscription all contributed to the reversal in popular opinion. All of this
reminded Irish Catholics that Ireland never wanted anything from England except
to be left alone, and now Ireland's best and brightest young men were about to
be conscripted as cannon fodder in England's war against the Germans, with whom
the Irish had no quarrel. Within six weeks, popular ballads and poems were
exalting the executed rebels, particularly Pearse, as "martyred prisoners of
war", and pictures of the "martyrs" were hanging in virtually every Catholic pub
in Ireland. Participation in the Easter Rising became an unbeatable credential
for aspiring politicians, including Eamon de Valera, Michael Collins, Cathal
Brugha and the celebrated Countess Constance Markievicz** all of whom
participated in the Rising.
All of this worked against Redmond and his Irish Parliamentary party, which
was regarded as too accommodating towards the British. The beneficiary was Sinn
Fein, which had been a near zero factor in Irish politics until 1916, when the
media erroneously gave it credit for sponsoring the Easter Rising. World War I
ended in October, 1918, and general elections for the British Parliament were
held two months later. Redmond's Irish Parliamentary Party, which had
monopolized the "Catholic seats" for decades, was directly challenged by Sinn
Fein, whose candidates pledged to boycott the British Parliament, and instead to
constitute themselves the legislature of a revolutionary Republic of Ireland.
When the votes were counted, the Irish Parliamentary party -- formerly the party
of Parnell and Redmond -- had won only 6 seats, a humiliating defeat, while Sinn
Fein had elected 73 members. (Protestant-unionists took 26 seats.) Many of the
victorious Sinn Fein candidates were veterans of the Easter Rising, and indeed
36 of the 73 remained in jail. Most were young, and even some women were
elected. Some, including Collins, were members of the IRB, but most were not.
Also elected -- a departure from the violent norm -- was Arthur Griffith, the
pacifist founder of Sinn Fein, who had taken no part in the Easter Rising.
Honoring their pledge, the successful Sinn Fein candidates met in Dublin in
January 1919 and followed an agenda borrowed from the American and French
Revolutions. They passed a Declaration of Independence and "ratified" the
Republic that had originally been proclaimed at the Easter Rising in 1916. They
declared themselves to be the Dail Eireann, and passed resolutions declaring
that the Dail Eireann had the exclusive power to make laws binding on the Irish
people, and that the British Parliament had no jurisdiction over Ireland. They
demanded that England evacuate the entire Ireland. They established Republican
courts, which subsequently gained the confidence of the citizenry. The Dail then
elected a government, with de Valera as President and Griffith as Vice
President. Collins was appointed Minister of Finance, as well as Commander (but
not Chief of Staff) of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the name given to the
new government's militia, which consisted of former members of the Irish
Volunteers; this latter appointment was disingenuous, however, because their
Dail's control over the IRA was less than complete.
The Irish revolution was now in progress, but who was really in charge? The
Dail, which consisted almost entirely of Sinn Fein politicians, had won the
hearts and minds of the people, and therefore could not be excluded from further
progress of the revolution, but the Dail was not really in charge. The real
power resided in the well armed IRA (15,000 active members, perhaps 80,000
standby), which had an independent leadership -- Cathal Brugha (the most hard
line Republican of all), Richard Mulcahey, and Michael Collins -- that refused
to cede control to either the Dail or the IRB. (Both organizations were
influential in the IRA, however.) The IRB, which had triggered everything by
sponsoring the Easter Rising, was overwhelmed by the rapid expansion of its own
revolution. Although the IRB remained a player, it found itself unable to
dictate strategy or events; indeed, when Michael Collins later was ambushed and
killed (1922), the IRB slid into oblivion.
The historically important individuals were de Valera and Collins. Eamon de
Valera (1882-1975) was born and baptized Catholic in New York of a Spanish
father and an Irish mother. He was reared in Bruree, County Limerick, where he
was educated in Catholic schools, later graduating from University College,
Dublin. A non-influential mathematics teacher before 1916, he gained celebrity
in the Easter Rising as the last unit commander to surrender, for which he
received the death sentence, later commuted (perhaps because of his apparent
American citizenship). He was president of Sinn Fein (1917-27), was elected to
the first Dial, and served as President of the provisional government (1919-22),
but opposed the 1921 treaty and resigned from office when it was approved. In
1927, after five years out of office, he formed a new political party, Fianna
Fail, was elected to the Dail, and after 1932 became Ireland's most beloved
elected official, serving as Prime Minister for a total of 21 years.
Michael Collins (1890-1922), eight years younger than de Valera, was born and
baptized Catholic in Clonakilty, County Cork. A natural and charismatic leader,
he had no formal education after high school, instead working as a clerk in
London, where he joined the IRB. He returned to Ireland in 1915 and participated
in the Easter Rising, for which he was interned at Frongoch (Wales), where he
emerged as the prisoners' leader. Upon his release, he actively participated in
all of the organizations that pushed the revolution forward -- IRB, IRA, Sinn
Fein -- and became the rising star in each. After de Valera left for America
(June 1919) on an 18 month fund raising tour, Collins became the dominant figure
in the revolution. At various times, Collins held positions as (1) President of
the Supreme Council of the IRB, (2) Commander of the IRA (1919-21), later
Commander-in-Chief of the Free State Army (1922), (3) Sinn Fein member of the
Dail, (4) Minister of Finance of the 1919 provisional government, and (5)
cabinet member in first post-treaty government.
Following the Dail's 1919 session, guerilla warfare naturally erupted. (The
war euphemistically was called "The Troubles", later the "Tan War".) On one side
was the IRA, the militia of the new government, about 15,000 troops strong, and
fully supported by the citizenry. The key man for the IRA was Michael Collins, a
brilliant commander who set up a remarkable intelligence (and
counter-intelligence) operation that enabled the IRA to avoid extinction at the
hands of the British. On the other side were special British forces known as the
"Auxiliaries" and the "Black and Tan" (after their hybrid uniforms), with some
help from the British army, 45,000 strong. Each side perpetrated atrocities, but
most of the public attention fell on the Black and Tan, whose leaders apparently
believed that very brutal and very public atrocities were the best way to
discourage the populace from supporting the rebels. In one incident, they
deliberately started a series of fires in Cork, then cut all fire hoses brought
out to fight the fire. In another notorious and very public incident, called
"Bloody Sunday", the Black and Tan, to retaliate for the execution of 16 spies
by Collins' counter intelligence unit, fired automatic weapons and rifles into a
crowd at a football game in Dublin, killing 12 innocent spectators and wounding
60.
Bloody Sunday and the other atrocities, coming so soon after the British
massacre of at least 379 peaceful demonstrators in Amritsar*** India, triggered
worldwide condemnation of the British government, which responded by enacting
the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, purporting to establish separate parliaments
for "Northern Ireland" and "Southern Ireland", each with extensive home rule
powers. Northern Ireland quickly accepted the legislation, and began a series of
brutal pogroms against Catholics. On July 10, 1921, Protestant mobs killed 15
Catholics, wounded 68, and burned to the ground 161 Catholic homes, all of which
was just a taste of what was yet to come.
Dail Eireann refused to accept the new legislation, but did agree to a cease
fire in 1921, after which British Prime Minister David Lloyd George invited de
Valera to participate in negotiations for a treaty. De Valera, as President,
appointed Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins to lead the negotiating team.
Details of the negotiations are not fully known, but Griffith and Collins
returned with a treaty, subject to approval of the Dail, that partitioned
Ireland into two entities: (1) A 26 county self-governing dominion, called the
Irish Free State, which had nearly full independence from England, and (2) An
entity consisting of 6 counties carved out of Ulster, formally named Northern
Ireland, which remained a part of Great Britain, but which (ironically, because
Ulster so vigorously opposed "home rule") was given its separate parliament.
Since areas near the border were heavily Catholic, a Commission was established
to recommend adjustments to the boundary.
The treaty quickly became the most controversial issue in the history of
Ireland. The treaty granted the 26 counties greater independence than Ireland
had enjoyed in over 700 years, and most impartial observers regarded it as a
stepping stone to full independence within a generation or two. Compared to the
modest Home Rule Act of 1914, the treaty was a gigantic step forward for
Republicans. But the true hard liners -- including the IRA's Cathal Brugha --
found three fatal flaws: (1) It excluded six counties in Ulster, thereby
abandoning Catholics and nationalists in that part of Ireland; (2) It did not
establish a truly independent Republic, only a semi-autonomous state in which
Britain controlled harbors in times of emergency; and (3) It required an oath of
fidelity to the Crown from elected officials. President de Valera was furious
over the treaty, partly because of its terms (he hated the oath) and partly
because it was signed without his explicit approval. He led the opposition in
the Dail.
After months of bitter debate, on January 7, 1922, the treaty passed the Dail
on a close vote (64-57), and a provisional "Free State" government was formed to
implement the treaty. But the controversy raged on. De Valera resigned rather
than serve in the provisional government, which he considered illegitimate. He
was replaced by Griffith. Shortly after the vote, Sinn Fein split into two
warring factions.
The pro-treaty faction, led by Griffith and Collins, acknowledged that the
treaty was less than perfection, but argued that it was the best settlement
possible, one that was a stepping stone to a true republic in the foreseeable
future. They also argued that the Boundary Commission would reduce Northern
Ireland to a small, probably non-viable, entity. The pro-treaty faction was
supported by the citizenry, which wanted to end the hostilities and knew that no
amount of fighting could reverse attitudes in Ulster.
The anti-treaty faction, led by de Valera, Brugha and most of the IRA
leadership, felt honor-bound to accept nothing less than a genuine "republic"
which at most was "externally associated" with Britain. In addition, de Valera's
Republicans refused to sit in the Dail because of the required oath of fidelity
to the British crown.
Some IRA units supported the treaty and transformed themselves into the army
of the new Irish Free State, giving up the name IRA. Other IRA units were
anti-treaty, and under Brugha continued to function under the name IRA. They
promptly commandeered the Four Courts building as IRA headquarters.
Five months later, another election was held and the pro-treaty faction
received a safe majority (58 to 36). They immediately formed a permanent "Irish
Free State" government. Initially, the government was headed by Griffith, but
within two months he died of natural causes and was replaced by William Cosgrave
(1880-1965). But successful anti-treaty candidates refused to take the hated
oath or participate in the Dail. The Irish Parliamentary party -- the party of
Parnell and Redmond -- received so few votes it ceased operations.
The Irish Civil War began almost immediately. Using artillery borrowed from
Britain, the Free State government, which proved to be highly authoritarian,
bombarded IRA headquarters (the Four Courts building) with artillery fire,
killing Cathal Brugha in the process. Then, with military assistance from
Britain, it brutally and methodically set about destroying the rebellious
opposition. The government used the same tactics that had been most effective
against them when they were rebels. It executed 77 anti-treaty advocates, some
with cause, some without. It burned down homes and imprisoned over 11,000
anti-treaty citizens. Eventually, the numerically superior Free State Army
overwhelmed the IRA.
The Civil War ended on May 24, 1923, although de Valera, as political leader
of the anti-treaty faction, refused to give Cosgrave's government the
satisfaction of a formal surrender. Instead, he simply sent a message to the IRA
troops and other supporters that further resistance was futile and the effort
was being abandoned.
During the war, Michael Collins was ambushed and killed. It was a devastating
blow for the IRB, since Collins was the last of their members to remain a power
in Cosgrave's government. The IRB never regained its influence in Irish affairs.
More importantly, Collins' death enabled de Valera to eventually become the
virtually undisputed political leader of the new state, and to impose (with
scant interference) his vision on Ireland.
Beginning in mid-1923, the duly elected government of the new "Irish Free
State" -- so named under the 1922 constitution framed by the pro-treaty side --
finally was in a position to function. By now, Cosgrave had reorganized his pro
treaty supporters into a new political party, Cumann na nGaedheal, which
subsequently (after merger with the quasi-Fascist "Blue Shirts") became Fine
Gael. The anti-treaty Republicans -- the IRA and its political wing, Sinn Fein
-- put armed hostilities behind them for the duration, but continued to elect
Sinn Fein members who refused to take the hated oath or participate in the Dail.
Despite the difficulties of governing a state whose very legitimacy was rejected
by the major opposition party, the Cosgrave government set up a well-functioning
administration that passed some modest reforms. It did suffer one major
embarrassment, however. In 1925, on the eve of the Boundary Commission report,
word leaked that the Commission had recommended only minor changes, mostly
favoring the North; with the entire island on the verge of riot, the three
governments formally agreed that the original boundary should remain in place.
In 1927, de Valera reconciled his conscience to taking the oath while denying
that he was doing any such thing. De Valera and his supporters, who constituted
almost half of the anti-treaty faction, split from the main body of Republicans,
which still was operating under the names IRA and Sinn Fein. De Valera formed a
new political party, Fianna Fail, and was elected to the Dail. After the 1932
election, Cosgrave's Fine Gael party lacked the votes to form a government, and
a coalition government comprised of Fianna Fail and Labour was formed with de
Valera as prime minister. Most anti-treaty Republicans eventually joined de
Valera and supported the Free State, while the IRA and Sinn Fein were reduced to
tiny dissident elements. De Valera became Ireland's most beloved and enduring
elected official, serving as prime minister from 1932 until 1948, and again in
1951 through 1954 and 1957 through 1959, 21 years in all.
END NOTES TO CHAPTER 12.
* The historic province of Ulster encompassed an area which in 1914 was
divided into nine counties. Four counties were overwhelmingly (about 70%)
Protestant and three heavily Catholic. Two counties had small but clear Catholic
majorities. Northern Irish "unionists" originally sought all nine counties, but
this was rejected by Britain because the Protestant voting majority was too
small (about 53%) to be secure. Some members of Parliament advocated inclusion
of only the four Protestant counties, but this was rejected because the
geographical area was deemed too small for the statelet to be viable. Eventually
a unionist-British consensus developed for a six county statelet which included
the four Protestant counties (Antrim, Down, Armagh, and Londonderry) plus the
two counties with only small Catholic majorities (Tyrone and Fermanagh). This
gave the new statelet maximum geographical area while maintaining a safe 2 to 1
Protestant voting majority. Among the many controversial aspects of partition,
the inclusion of Tyrone and Fermanagh was perhaps the most controversial.
** The rebellious daughter of a Protestant Ascendancy family, the affluent
Gore-Booths of Sligo, Markievicz (1868-1927) was born in London and educated at
elite schools in Paris, where she developed a life long compassion for the poor.
A striking beauty, she offended Ascendancy sensibilities by marrying a Catholic
count from Poland and converting to Catholicism. She was attracted to politics
by the women's suffrage issue and Maude Gonne's Irish women's movement, but soon
embraced Irish independence. She became an officer in Connolly's radical
Citizens Army, and although she was frustrated by Griffith's pacifism, she also
joined Sinn Fein. She participated in the Easter Rising, for which she received
the death sentence, which was commuted because of her gender, infuriating her.
In 1918, from her jail cell, she became the first woman elected to the British
House of Commons, but like all Sinn Fein candidates, she pledged not to take her
seat, opting instead for the Dail Eireann. She was twice appointed Minister of
Labour in the new government, but when the Irish Civil War broke out, she
resigned and joined the IRA/anti-treaty side. She dedicated her later years to
helping the poor.
*** According to the British count, 379 Indians were killed, and 1200
wounded, on April 13, 1919, when British troops under General Reginald Dyer
fired on peaceful demonstrators protesting British legislation giving emergency
powers to the British colonial government. The Indian government claims a much
higher number of casualties. At the subsequent hearings, General Dyer showed no
remorse, testifying that stern measures of this type were necessary to maintain
order in the colonies.
Ch. 13. Epilogue (1933-1996).
In 1937 a new constitution drafted by de Valera was adopted, and the name of
the state was changed from "Irish Free State" to "Eire". Formally, the new state
remained within the British Commonwealth, but in actual practice it was a
republic in everything but name. In the 1930s and 1940s, the government
repeatedly found itself in conflict with the IRA, but even under de Valera,
stern measures were taken against the IRA. During World War II, de Valera's
government, supported by a majority of its citizens, followed a policy of
neutrality.
In 1948, Republicans attained their 150 year old dream, at least for the 26
counties: In name as well as in substance, the 26 counties became a full
Republic outside the Commonwealth, pursuant to legislation sponsored by John A.
Costello (1891-1976), a Fine Gael leader who succeeded de Valera as prime
minister in a coalition government. The same legislation renamed the state from
"Eire" to the "Republic of Ireland", its current name.
After mid-century, historical focus turned to Northern Ireland, where
Catholics had been persecuted continuously since 1921, including a pogrom in
1922 and anti-Catholic Belfast riots in 1935. Civil Rights protests in the
United States on behalf of blacks inspired a Civil Rights movement in Northern
Ireland on behalf of Catholics. Predictably, the Northern Ireland (Stormont)
government played into the hands of the peaceful demonstrators. In a celebrated
incident at Burntollet Bridge, television cameras captured uniformed police
mingling gregariously with a mob tossing rocks and bottles off a precipice onto
peaceful marchers below; later that day, according to a British investigation,
the police invaded Catholic neighborhoods in Derry and committed numerous acts
of assault, battery and malicious property damage. British troops then were
called in to restore order, but the conduct of the troops soon turned hostile to
beleaguered Catholics, who sought help from the previously moribund IRA* by
taunting it with graffiti on walls "IRA = I Ran Away". This inspired a violent
faction of the IRA, later known as the "Provisional IRA" (a.k.a. "Provos"or
"PIRA"), to split from the "Official" (and now less violent) IRA, and to launch
a campaign of terror and violence. Violent retaliation promptly came from
militant Protestants, who organized as the Ulster Volunteer Force ("UVF"). In
mid-1971, PIRA and UVF violence led the Stormont government, backed by the
British Army, to ban all civil rights demonstrations and also to inaugurate
internment (imprisonment without trial or even charges); but when 345 out of 346
of the internees turned out to be Catholic, Catholics were confirmed in their
belief that the British and Stormont governments were collaborating to suppress
the legitimate aspirations of Catholics. Civil rights demonstrations continued,
despite the ban being enforced by the British Army.
Bloody Sunday II (January 30, 1972) in Derry is the defining moment in the
history of the Northern Ireland statelet. With no discernable cause, elite
British troops -- shades of Kent State -- opened fire into a crowd of peaceful
and unarmed civil rights demonstrators. The shooting continued for a full 15
minutes, with many of the survivors comparing themselves to ducks in a shooting
gallery. When the massacre finally was over, 13 unarmed and peaceful
demonstrators lay dead. Among Catholics, the atrocity was made worse when the
official investigation of Lord Widgery whitewashed the killings on the specious
grounds the troops had been under IRA fire, or thought they were**. (No spent
bullets were found behind the troops, nor did any journalist or other
independent witness detect any rifle fire.) Bloody Sunday II, together with the
Widgery whitewash, dramatically elevated the status and standing of the PIRA
(now called simply "IRA" again) within a Catholic community which
understandingly believed it had nowhere else to turn.
In March 1972 the aggregate impact of Bloody Sunday and IRA/UVF violence
forced the British Parliament to abolish the "home rule" Parliament (at
Stormont) which had been given to Northern Ireland at its inception in 1920. The
British Parliament assumed "direct" governance of Northern Ireland, and imposed
numerous worthwhile reforms. Among other things, gerrymandered city councils
were eliminated, and laws prohibiting anti-Catholic discrimination both in the
allocation of public housing units (which constituted the majority of all
housing units) and in public employment were enacted and effective. Laws
prohibiting discrimination in private sector employment also were enacted, but
have been less effective. For the IRA, however, progress on civil rights was a
subsidiary issue; the ultimate goal, and the only goal acceptable to the IRA,
was a "United Irish Republic" comprising all 32 counties. Throughout the 1970s,
1980s, and into the 1990s, the IRA continued their campaign of terror against
British targets in Northern Ireland, Britain, and elsewhere. Then in August
1994, the IRA announced a "complete cessation of military operations", and
requested multi-party peace negotiations on Northern Ireland. But when peace
talks had not materialized by February, 1996, the IRA detonated a large bomb in
the Docklands area of London, killing two people, injuring many others, and
causing massive property damage. Politicians quickly scurried about to resurrect
the "peace process", but few historians believed the violence was over.
END NOTES TO CHAPTER 12 (EPILOGUE).
* Following World War II, the IRA seemed to be a spent force militarily. It
evolved into a Marxist-oriented organization agitating for Catholic civil rights
and radical social reform in Northern Ireland, but it failed to win much
support, even among the Catholic minority.
** Assuming arguendo that the troops had been under fire, Lord Widgery still
must have found it challenging to justify at least some of the killings. Paddy
Doherty was killed as he crawled on his hand and knees, obviously unarmed, to
assist a youngster lying wounded in the middle of the street; the fatal bullet
entered his buttocks, traveled up his spine, and exited his chest. Bernard
McGuigan, waving a white handkerchief and obviously unarmed, was shot in the
head while trying to aid the fatally injured Doherty. Kevin McElhinney, only 17,
died like Doherty, except that he was crawling towards the safety of a doorway
instead of to help a wounded man; the bullet entered his buttocks and went
through his body. James Wray initially was only wounded, and lying face down on
the pavement (probably paralyzed), from a shot in the back; then a soldier,
noticing that he was still alive, took a few steps closer, and fired another
shot into Wray's back, killing him. Gerald McKinney stood holding his hands
above his head in the traditional surrender gesture when a soldier approached
and from 9 feet away shot him in the chest.