Four Green Fields: Trollheart's History of Ireland

[Trollheart]

If Irish people go abroad, they're generally welcomed more than, say, English people. You're heard speaking English in a foreign country and they say "English?" and you shake your head and say "No, Irish." Immediately there is a change in attitude, and you're more welcomed. Why is that? Well, part of it certainly has to do with our amazing sports supporters, the rugby and especially soccer fans who follow the national team when they're in international competitions such as The World Cup or the European Championships. Their impeccable behaviour abroad, compared to some has earned them the deserved respect and love of just about every country they visit. They are a credit to our nation, without question. There has never been, to my knowledge, a single instance of one Irish fan being involved in any trouble in all the time they've been travelling supporting their country. And given how we Irish are known for drinking, that's damned impressive.

Another reason though could be that, to totally simplify things, just about everyone (with the possible exception of the English) love us and identify with us because we are a small country that has been occupied for most of our history. We have never made war upon anyone, we have never invaded anyone (couldn't remain sober long enough to do so probably! ) and therefore we are not seen as an oppressive nation, unlike Britain, Germany and the USA among others. We have only been an independent, free country for less than a century, which makes us a very young country in comparison to most of the rest of the world, and we have been on the receiving end of occupation, oppression, injustice and discrimination.

However, all is not rosy in Irish history, far from it. Without any means to invade other countries, without a standing army or anything even close to a navy, trapped on our own little insular island for thousands of years, we Irish have in the past typically turned to fighting ourselves. Clan chief fought clan chief, territories were disputed, civil war erupted and of course we had "The Troubles" for over thirty years. So I began wondering what Irish history was like, and having been very interested in it while at school, I thought I'd like to explore the story behind my native country.

I'll therefore be looking into the very beginnings of Ireland with the ancient Celts and Druids, the Viking invasion, the Norman occupation, everything up to the Easter Rising and the eventual procurement of freedom when we became a free state in 1923. I'll then be going on from there, to meet up with the present, where, after over eighty years of freedom and self-determination we handed back our sovereignty to Europe in return for an IMF bailout caused by greedy bankers. This will be, simply put, the entire history of Ireland, which is deeper and more interesting than many might think, and is littered with treachery, betrayal, wars, tragedies and a struggle for freedom that would take centuries to eventually achieve. Like most countries, it's a story of heroism and failure, of cowardice and reversal of fortune, of strength and honesty and belief and faith, and it has its heroes and its martyrs while standing alongside those are its traitors and its villains.

I'll be using multiple sources, and understand of course that this will obviously take a long time and will be a work in progress, but as ever you're all welcome to join in and comment.

Which just leaves me to issue the traditional Irish welcome: Cead mile failte (A hundred thousand welcomes) and hope you enjoy what I write here.

[Trollheart]

Chapter I: Meet the Irish

Timeline: 1200 BC - 500 AD

So, where did the Irish come from? Was there some prehistoric pub from which, Flintstones-like, we all fell out of the door at closing time and started fighting in the street? Well, quite possibly, but historians and archaeologists link us to the ancient Celts, a pagan people who migrated from the Russian Steppes into northern Europe around about the time of the Iron Age, somewhere around 1200 BC, and ended up in the general areas of what was known at the time as Bohemia (part of Germany today) and Austria.

Before I go any further, I would like to qualify the rest of this by quoting from Richard Killeen's A Brief History of Ireland when he says "What follows is not entirely true. No history can be complete. The sources on which it is based are always partial, often in both senses of the word ... For here we are dealing with the era before written records – reliable or otherwise – and have only the inferences drawn from archaeology and certain artifacts to guide us." Worth bearing in mind, certainly.

The Celts were a deeply spiritual people, and though they worshipped goddesses as well as gods they were very much a male-dominated society, with few if any examples of female leaders having been discovered. They also are believed to have practiced ritual sacrifice, including human, to appease their gods and ensure bountiful harvests, fruitful women and victory in battle.

However, even these ancient people, though they became acknowledged as the ancestors of we modern Irish, were not the first people to live in Ireland. An unknown and vanished society which flourished from, it is thought, about 9000 BC (that's eight thousand years before the Celts got here) were responsible for the building of ancient tombs and monuments, such as the burial chambers in Newgrange, Co. Meath, which archaeologists believe were constructed five hundred years before the great Egyptian pyramids and over one thousand years before one of the most famous of the English monuments, Stonehenge. Hah! In your faces, ancient civilisations! Newgrange is therefore more or less accepted as one of the oldest monuments in the world today. It is probably well known (but I'll tell you anyway in case you aren't aware) that it is more than just a simple burial chamber. It is of the type known as a "passage tomb", due to its long narrow approach to the burial chamber itself.

As a child I remember visiting this as part of a school trip, and being a child (probably nine, ten years old, I can't quite remember but young definitely) I was less than impressed. For me, as for all my schoolmates, all this was was a chance to skip a day in school, ride on a bus and go somewhere we had never been. I wish I could have known at the time how important that visit should have been, but all I truly remember of it is it being cold, dark and just the tiniest bit disquieting as you descended into the dark, hoping the guide would be able to help us all find our way back out into the light.

The truth about Newgrange though, which I never witnessed personally but is a matter of record and draws people to it in almost pilgrimage every year, is that it is so constructed that there is a point on the very top of the cairn (the burial mound) through which the sun will shine only on one particular day – the Winter Solstice, December 21 – and when it does, it travels along the passage until it illuminates, with perfect accuracy and precision, an ancient symbol of renewal and rebirth carved on the back of the furthest wall.

As a religious symbol, this marks the return of the sun, the giver of life, into the darkness to renew the spirit and bring hope. It is said to be a powerful, even religious experience to those who are lucky enough to see it for themselves, and it proves that ancient though the people were, they had enough knowledge of mathematics, astronomy and construction to be able to build such a thing, and they were obviously a people for whom religion was not just something you did; it was their whole life, perhaps their very reason for existence. They certainly worshipped what would be known today as pagan gods, but they were as faithful to (perhaps fearful of) them as the ancient Egyptians were to theirs.

The first known (given Mr. Killeen's important caveat above) inhabitants of Ireland were a Mesolithic people, meaning Stone Age (well, technically, Middle Stone Age, but you don't care about that, do you?) who were hunter-gatherers, and are believed (or assumed) to have come over from the mainland of Scotland to settle in what is now Northern Ireland, or the province of Ulster. This then essentially makes Northern Ireland the oldest civilised part of Ireland, which sucks for us in the Republic, but at least we have a better soccer team! Well, barely...  As for the Mesolithics, they were supplanted or succeeded by a new race in around 4000 BC who began to settle and farm the land, these being Neolithic, or New Stone Age, and they created the first real settlements of people, farms and attempts at agriculture, sowing crops, raising cattle and building walled enclosures. With a good and regular supply of food and permanent settlements the population grew and expanded.

With the arrival of the Celts however, these people were either fought to extinction or intermarried with the newcomers, with the Celts becoming the ancient forebears of the modern Irish people. Unlike the Native Americans or the Australian Aborigines, there are no descendants of this original race that inhabited Ireland and nothing exists of them now but some fossils and the impressive structures they left behind. The future of Ireland would be written by the Celts.

Although we know virtually nothing about them, the original inhabitants of Ireland left no evidence behind to allude to any real sort of hierarchy or system of justice. Undoubtedly they had them, as even the most primitive society cannot exist without rules, laws and punishments for those who break them, but the first properly organised system of law, perhaps even a form of government, comes with the arrival of the Celts and the rise of their religious leaders, the Druids.

Best likened these days to a cross between judges, historians and wizards, Druids kept the ancient beliefs alive, ensured the proper gods were worshipped, passed and enforced laws, and were answerable to no man, not even the king or chieftain. They were what we would call today "freelancers", and their word was law. Being outside the hierarchical structure of Celtic society, they could even call a king to account if he had transgressed the law. Despite what might seem though as unlimited power – an ancient form, perhaps, of Executive Privilege? - Druids did not challenge their leaders and were not involved in any military undertakings. They were peaceful men, whose main mission in life was to honour and preserve the Celtic way of life, to pass down the stories of their mythology – by mouth alone, for the Celts had no form of writing, beyond Ogham, of which more shortly – and to revere and placate the ancient gods.

They were poets and storytellers, judges and arbiters – none could be more impartial in a dispute than a Druid – and even advisors to kings. They held great power, yes, but in this one instance power did not corrupt. While the Druids who served the Celts in Britain and Gaul rose up against the Roman occupation of their lands and led the resistance against the invaders, Irish Druids did not take up arms at all, remaining completely peaceful.

Although the Celts did not or could not write, they did have a very rudimentary alphabet. It consisted of a number of straight lines, sometimes slanted and/or crossing other lines. This was called Ogham (I was brought up to believe it is pronounced "oh-am" but most documentaries on the Irish or the Celts I have watched seem to think it should be pronounced "og-ham". I'm not sure which is right) and was used mostly to decorate tombs, often by way of huge stone crosses which can still be seen on graves today, though of course the ones that mark headstones these days are replicas and copies. Still, originals can be found in various archaeological sites, and most people know what you mean when you speak of a Celtic Cross. If you don't, then look below.

Ogham was a very simple alphabet, with twenty-five characters but was apparently very limited in what it could say: basically, they used it for inscribing the name of the person buried under the cross, and that was about it. But writing isn't everything, and the Celts must have had great memories as they passed their stories on down, word for word, through successive generations. Many of these were of course the exploits of kings or leaders, but much of their lore centred around the deeds of heroes, whether real or imagined, that came to make up the basis of Celtic mythology. Like most peoples, the Celts did not relate made-up stories for entertainment; they actually believed these events took place in a far-off time. Some of them may have – the idea of a young boy killing a dog who was attacking him by hitting him with a hurley ball and thereafter having to take the dog's place as the chief's guard (the genesis of the legend of one of Ireland's most revered heroes, Cuchulainn) could be seen to have happened – others perhaps might be a little more fanciful, such as tales of frost giants and warp spasms and the Salmon of Knowledge, to say nothing of Tir na nOg.

But in time, as Christianity took hold of the world and spread to Britain and Ireland, the Druids and the Celtic beliefs would be toppled, their gods either banished to fairy stories and myths or appropriated and metamorphosed into saints and martyrs, making Ireland in time one of the most Christian countries of the world. Old beliefs would die out as the new took hold, and civilisation of a different type would come to the Emerald Isle as we exchanged a group of powerful gods for one who couldn't even save his own son from death. Not the greatest bargain, in my view.

[Trollheart]

Chapter II: The Book of Invasions, Part One:
Onward, Christian Soldiers

Timeline: 500 AD - 800 AD

It might seem a hell of a leap to jump from, what, 1200 BC to 500 AD, and it is. We're talking about a millennium and a half here. But in terms of Irish history, it's where you really end up next, as this was the beginnings of the conversion of Ireland to Christianity, a power that holds sway over us even to this day. Throughout its long history Ireland has been subject to invasions: the Vikings, the Normans,  the English. Oddly enough, I was surprised to find my research turn up, we were not invaded by the Romans, unlike the English. Events seem to have conspired to have kept Ireland safe, as it were, at the eleventh hour. With a rebel Irish chieftain plotting with the Roman governor of Britain to aid in an Irish invasion, the governor was suddenly called back to Rome to deal with barbarian attacks closer to home, and so the invasion was cancelled.

We've always been a fighting people. On occasions we have allied to the enemy of our enemy (usually England), teaming up with or supporting the likes of the Scottish, the Spanish and the French, often along shared lines of faith, sometimes not. We have, in general, failed to drive back each wave of new invaders, but often have defeated them in more cunning ways, as they became integrated into our culture, marrying into Irish families and taking Irish land. Many Irish surnames that survive today have their origins in French, for example, as Norman conquerors became, slowly, Irish inhabitants. The same with the Vikings, with the famous slogan I recall from my history lessons that they "became more like the Irish than the Irish themselves." Well, they certainly mirrored our drinking habits, that's for sure!

But perhaps the most insidious and unstoppable invasion of all was that of the Christian missionaries who set out from the Roman Empire (mostly from Britain at the time) in around 500 AD to convert all heathens to the new religion that was sweeping across Europe, thanks in large part to the change of heart of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who, in around 306 AD converted to Christianity. Taking the title of Holy Roman Emperor he decreed tolerance and acceptance of the new religion which had up until then been mercilessly prosecuted by previous emperors, with the infamous stories of Christians being thrown into the arenas to fight lions and other wild animals, as well as other horrible punishments for what was seen as denying the true gods of Rome. Christian priests and monks were now free to travel throughout the empire, teaching the Good News and attempting to convert all nations to the true faith.

The most famous of these missionaries was a man who was born Palladius Patricius, but became known and revered in Ireland as Saint Patrick.

Saint Patrick

If you've ever wondered why Saint Patrick's Day is such a big deal in Ireland, you need to realise how important the man was to this country. Born to a Roman official in occupied Britain, he was captured by an Irish raiding party, many of which had become emboldened as the Roman Empire in general began to crumble and shrink back on itself, and as garrisons and commanders and governors were recalled to Rome to fend off the attacks of the barbarian hordes such as the Visigoths, the Franks and the Germanic tribes. I suppose from that point of view you could point to the beginnings of the long antagonism between Ireland and England as having been started by us, but I'm sure the English sent out raiding parties of their own.

At any event, Patricius was captured (some say by the famous Irish chieftain known as Niall of the Nine Hostages) and taken to Ireland, where he was pressed into service as a slave. After tending sheep for six years he escaped back home, but while there he was tormented by the voice, he claims, of God (sometimes this is claimed to be the voice of the Irish people) calling him back to Ireland. During his time in Ireland he had become quite religious, turning to the Christian God in his hour of need, and now he devoted his time to study of the word of God, training to be a priest. When he was ready, he returned to Ireland around 432 AD and became the most successful export of Christianity there, building churches, destroying the hold of pagan gods and beliefs over the Irish people, and virtually single-handedly converting Ireland to Christianity.

Around the fifth century he wrote what is generally accepted as the first proper written Irish work of literature, his Confession, in which he described his mission to build churches and bring the word of God to Ireland. It's from this account that we have most of our information about him confirmed, though there's still some debate raging, such as whether Palladius and Patricius are two people or the names of one, but that sort of stuff is really only semantics and doesn't matter here. What's more interesting is the legend that grew up around him; almost, you might say, a new Celtic mythology, some of which is related below.

The Shamrock: One of the most famous stories told of St. Patrick is when he wished to explain the complicated nature of the Holy Trinity to the Irish, who just didn't understand. Three gods in one? What a bargain! How can I do better than twenty-nine ninety-nine, Troy? But seriously, it's a hard concept to get: how can you have one god who has a son and another part of him, each separate yet of the same being? Patrick explained this by picking a shamrock, and showing that though it has three leaves, they all rise from the one stalk. And so the people finally got it, and the shamrock became one of our most treasured plants, and indeed the emblem of our country.

The Snakes: Although historians agree that at no time in its history was Ireland ever troubled by snakes (except in the Dail! Irish in-joke) Patrick is said to have stood on a hill and waved his staff, driving them all into the sea. He is therefore credited with banishing all snakes from Ireland, though this is more than likely metaphor for his attempts – pretty much successful – to drive out the old pagan beliefs and discredit the gods of the Celts. Snakes being seen as evil, and all, and linked with Satan and the Garden of Eden. You know the kind of thing.

With the coming of Saint Patrick, it was the end of the old ways in Ireland. Christianity one, Pagans nil. Of course, in some corners of Ireland the worship of pagan deities continued for a time, and the old practices were kept up, but in time the Church consolidated its absolute power over the Irish people, and the old gods were remembered only in folk tales and legend. If you take Rome as being the centre of the Christian Church, as it was, then  essentially the Romans did invade, and subdue, Ireland, though not by military might. This was one of the only invasions of our island against which there was no standing, and though in later centuries when the Church underwent a fundamental schism one faction of this new religion would battle another for supremacy, Ireland would always be, and always has been, a Christian country.

Hot on the heels of Saint Patrick came other missionaries, priests, monks, abbots and bishops, who built monasteries, seen as the first real centres of any sort of governance in Ireland, where the idea of towns or even villages had yet to take hold. With the newly-converted Irish people holding them in awe, and with tacit support from various chieftains and leaders in the hope of bolstering their own power, the monasteries became almost a ruling force in Ireland. This next-to-absolute power of the Church only strengthened over the centuries, and indeed, even as late as the middle of the twentieth century, and further, up to the 1950s, 1960s and even 1970s, the Church held a sort of hypnotic power over the people of Ireland. Priests were sacrosanct and their word was taken as fact. The advice or decree of one was followed blindly. Families sent their sons into the priesthood, seen as a status symbol, and if a priest accused you or your family of doing something, even if you had not done it, you had. The power of the Church was absolute, and though it was ostensibly separated from the State, in real terms the two colluded more than they disagreed.

This blind obedience to the Church, especially the one which held sway over almost all of Southern Ireland, or what came to be known as The Republic, only began to be questioned around the 1980s, when evidence of clerical abuse towards children began to surface, and the almighty name of the Catholic Church began to be seen as an idol with clay feet. Suddenly, the evidence was there and the scales fell from (most) people's eyes; the Church was just another organisation, ripe for corruption and perversion, and priests were not infallible saints, merely men with men's sometimes ugly appetites. What did emerge during the various reports into clerical abuse was that the State, especially the national police force, the Gardai, who should have been the protectors of the children who were abused, failed miserably, allowing itself to remain bedazzled by the worship of the Church and unable to fathom how priests could after all be just men, and flawed men at that. Now we know better, and the Church has had to try to amend its ideas and remake itself in the image of twenty-first century Ireland – not, it has to be said, with too much success so far, though the new Pope is helping matters a great deal with his down-to-earth, return-to-basics approach, something that has not been seen coming out of Rome in hundreds of centuries – and people are wiser, no longer trusting blindly in their spiritual leaders, and holding them to account when necessary.

But back in Saint Patrick's time, such ideas were totally alien to the Irish and the clergy were seen almost as gods, or would be if the Christian faith allowed belief in more than one deity. In a way, I suppose the Irish transferred the awe and reverence and respect they had had for the Druids to the new preachers of the gospel of Christ, and priests and bishops and all the rest became the successors to the trust people had placed in their ancient judges and holy men. It should, in the interests of fairness, be pointed out that at this point the Church – certainly the Church in Ireland – did not at any time capitalise on their power in the sort of ways Rome's Popes would do later, raising private armies, living in luxury while their people eked out a pathetic existence, fighting "holy wars" and levelling taxes on the pilgrims who came to worship at the holiest shrine of Christianity. On the contrary, monks typically took a vow of poverty and chastity, leading a quiet life of gentle contemplation, praising God, preaching to the masses and when Latin was introduced to Ireland creating some of the most beautiful works of written art ever seen, including the famous Book of Kells, completed around 800 AD.


The Book of Kells

There can be few people, even outside of Ireland, who have not at least heard of the famous Book of Kells. Written, it is believed, on the island of Iona, in the Inner Hebrides just off the coast of Scotland, it was said to have been begun in 800 AD by Saint Columba, and because of this has sometimes been called the Book of Columba. Modern historians have challenged this though, pointing to the fact that the Book is known or accepted to have been begun in 800 but that Columba was already over two hundred years dead by then. Whatever the case, whatever its origin, the Book of Kells is essentially the four Gospels of the New Testament of the Bible, lavishly illustrated with animal, human and Celtic imagery, and is widely accepted to be the finest example of what is known as "insular art" in history.

At its core, insular art is a type of writing where the words are "illuminated" by having figures stand under them, surround them or wind themselves around them, or otherwise colourfully decorated. These are known as illuminations, and Irish monks are acknowledged as having been the finest experts of this art in the world. This concentration of expertise (as well as the fall of the Roman Empire) drew like-minded artists to Ireland, where they studied under the monks, and led to the famous epithet for Ireland as being "a land of saints and scholars", true today as when it was written, I do assure you!

When Viking raiders attacked Ireland in the tenth century, sacking the monasteries and plundering their treasures, the Book of Kells was moved for safekeeping to the Abbey of Kells, in County Meath, which is where it acquired its name. Of course, this did not stop the Norsemen and they attacked the Abbey of Kells, yet somehow this amazing book survived, donated to Trinity College in Dublin in 1661, and can be seen today, for free, by anyone who wishes to do so, in the Library  of the college It is a huge attraction and draws visitors from all over the world to see it.

Interestingly, as the rest of Europe suffered with the fall of the Roman Empire and was plunged into what we know today as the Dark Ages (approximately 500 AD to 1000 AD), Ireland enjoyed a time of peace and tranquility, and great artistic advancement as monks and even lay persons worked in the monasteries, translating books like the Bible into Latin and even Irish – now that there was finally a written language that could be used in Ireland , carving huge stone Celtic crosses, and engraving fabulous detail on items like drinking cups, brooches and other jewellery.

With the decline of the Roman Empire, it was in fact Ireland that took up the baton, as it were, of missionary zeal and monks and priests from here travelled extensively across Europe, bringing the word of God to the heathen, whose ranks they had previously belonged to. Irish scholars and poets, writers and thinkers began to populate the courts of the more important kingdoms, such as France and Italy. For a time, Ireland enjoyed the reputation of, if not being the saviour of Christianity, then certainly its most voiciferous, powerful and successful ambassador. Comparatively suddenly, a tiny, unregarded island far from the centre of the mighty Roman Empire had become all but its successor in terms of orthodoxy and belief, and from the court of Kiev to that of Charlemagne himself, everyone knew of her existence.

But with increased presence and fame comes unwanted attention, and far across the seas to the cold north, to paraphrase H.G Wells, other eyes regarded this island with envy, and slowly, and surely they drew their plans against us. The next invaders would not use faith and piety as a weapon, but brutal aggression and a callous disregard for the new religion, which they saw as vastly inferior to, and threatening to supplant their own.

Note: Although the early history of Ireland is replete with saints and mythological beings who may or may not have existed, I am not covering them in this journal, as although they would certainly be seen as central to Irish beliefs and therefore an important part of Irish history, I want to concentrate more on the actual happenings and not get too bogged down with who saw what, where, and how. If such events are to be recounted at all, I'll address them in my mythology journal at some later point. I've only given space to Saint Patrick and Saint Columba because it was impossible not to.

[Trollheart]

Chapter III: The Book of Invasions, Part Two: Here Be Dragons!

It's hard to imagine properly the impact the sudden arrival of the Vikings had in Ireland. Apart from a raid on the nearby island of Lindisfarne in Northumbria in 793 AD, there had been no sign of invaders from across the sea and the explosion of violence and mayhem unleashed by the Norsemen when they attacked Irish ports in 795 surely took the Irish totally by surprise. Apart from anything else, though they warred among each other as frequently as ever, Ireland would have to have been said to have been a generally peaceful place, and it was those centres of peace, the Christian monasteries and abbeys, that first became the targets of these fierce warriors from across the sea. Stuffed with gold and jewels and precious statues as well as fine cloth and other riches – most if not all for use in the creation of their works and not the monks' own personal goods – they were treasure troves to the Vikings, and even better, weren't even defended! The monks were men of peace, sworn to oppose violence and forgive those who trespassed against them, but that wasn't much use when a Viking sword was slicing into your ribs or you were on the receiving end of a blow from a battleaxe that could remove your head clean from its shoulders!

And so the early raids went largely unopposed, as fragmented Irish tribal kingdoms tried to come to terms with the fact that they were under attack, not from another clan, but by experienced and battle-hardened veteran fighters who seemed to know no fear, and dispensed no mercy to their foes. Apart from threatening their religion with their pagan beliefs and their vicious aim of forcing these beliefs on the Irish (a role reversal if ever there was one, minus the violence) the Vikings posed a threat to the fragile alliances and small kingdoms dotted throughout Ireland, and the Irish knew if they did not fight back they would soon be overrun, and so began to try to put aside petty rivalries in an attempt to present a united front against the common enemy.

This was not, however, easy, and to realise why we have to take something of a hard look at exactly how the system of government, such as it was, worked in Ireland at this time, which was, to be fair, not very well at all.

The Tuatha

Irish people were divided into clans, or tuatha, (too-hah) these being more or less simple gatherings of people in the same area. Like any clan, there was a leader, though in general he (always he) had no authority outside of his own tuath. They called these tuatha (the plural has an "a" added, like a lot of Irish words, in case you think I'm just being lazy with the spellcheck; one tuath, two tuatha) kingdoms but they really weren't, and there were about two hundred of them scattered across Ireland. Of course, they all got on with each other.    To add to this, the north/south split had already been well in evidence in Ireland, with the powerful O'Neill family ruling pretty much all of Ulster, and casting greedy and ambitious glances South, and if O'Neill (known as "The" O'Neill, to denote the head of the family and the man in power, to differentiate him from the many other O'Neills scattered throughout Ulster) believed himself king of Ireland (High King), while there was no actual king in the South, his authority was not acknowledged there, though his southern cousins did control much of it.

The coming of Saint Patrick and the advent of the monasteries did little to change the age-old rivalries and tribal differences between the Irish, and while this tuath or that, this small king or that would support the monasteries with their patronage or gold, they continued to fight among themselves. Irish history is, sadly, replete with the seemingly unquenchable need to fight someone, often ourselves. With really little to no power over the local kings the abbeys and monasteries existed in a kind of oasis of peace within a maelstrom of in-fighting, petty rivalries and sneak attacks by one self-proclaimed king on another. As a matter of sad fact, the riches and lack of defences of the monasteries began to appeal even to certain Irish warlords, who would originally have fought to save them, and so the monks were caught between a rock and, well, another rock. Certain kings, chieftains or warlords would even ally with the Vikings if it served their cause, all of which increased the level of rivalry and violence that was spreading throughout Ireland.

Although power was mostly held in the fists of the Northern king, the O'Neill, history would record that Ireland's greatest leader of the time would arise out of an obscure town in the south of the country, near Limerick. It was called Dal Cais, and when the southern side of the O'Neills, led by a man called Mael Seachnaill, claimed overlordship and High Kingship of Ireland, they were opposed by the man who would eventually become Ireland's first true High King.

Brian Boru (941 – 1014 AD)

Born in the south province of Munster, Brian succeeded his brother to the throne shortly after the death of their father, and became the king of Munster. He then marched to challenge the declared High King, Mael Seachnaill, who controlled Meath, another province of Ireland. Brian wished to take Leinster and Connacht, the remaining two provinces in the south, and so went to war against Meal Seachnaill. Although he did not win every battle he fought, he proved a determined commander and a shrewd tactician, laying down much of the strategy later generations of Irish military would use. After fifteen years of attack and withdraw, bloody fighting and huge casualties on both sides, Brian finally prevailed and brought Leinster under his control. Meal Seachnaill was allowed to live, providing he swear fealty to Brian as the new High King, and the two men divided control of the southern half of Ireland between them. Meal Seachnaill, however, was quickly overthrown on his return to his own province, leading to a new rebellion against Brian, led by Mael Seachnaill's successor, Mael Morda .

It took another three bloody years before Brian finally took Dublin, after fighting the Viking lord of the city, Sitric Silkenbeard, whom he sent back to rule over the city in his name, as well as giving the Viking one of his daughters in marriage. As the first millennium turned, Brian faced off against the High King again, this time for the overall kingship of the island, and after two years of war Brian was crowned High King of Ireland in 1002. He then turned to consolidate his power by warring upon the long-independent northern province of Ulster and taking on the O'Neill and his allies there. A measure of how implacable and determined an enemy Ulster was shows not only in the fact that it took him a further ten years to subdue the province, but also when you realise that Brian had the massed forces of three quarters of the country against essentially a much smaller land, and yet they held out. Nevertheless, it was inevitable that the superior forces should triumph, and eventually in 1011 Brian Boru was crowned High King, and also recognised as the only Emperor of Ireland.

However the replacement for Mael Seachnaill, Meal Morda, decided he was going to challenge Brian's power, but knowing he could not do so by himself, and failing to sway any of the other leaders to his flag, he turned to Silkenbeard – who in addition to being ruler of Dublin was his cousin -  for help. The Viking lord was able to reach out to his comrades in the Orkney Islands and the Isle of Man and bring them to the assistance of Mael Morda, and the two armies finally met in one of the most climactic battles in early Irish history.

The Battle of Clontarf (1014 AD)

The struggle between Mael Morda and Brian Boru for control of Ireland was pretty much the very first Irish civil war, though it would not be the last. It was not Vikings against Irish, as Brian had Norsemen on his side too; the Vikings who fought for Mael Morda did not do so out of any family loyalty, despite Sitric Silkenbeard's ties to him, nor indeed in the hope of gaining land. This was a raiding party, a chance to grab riches, loot the monasteries (again: you get the feeling the monasteries must have had something similar to a sign on the door saying "X days/weeks since being looted"!) and return across the seas. They were not interested in settling in Ireland, and once they had made Mael Morda High King and taken their spoils they would just fuck off back to where they came.

Brian suffered his first setback when his old enemy Mael Seachnaill, with whom he had once shared the High Kingship of Ireland, withdrew his forces, though promising not to join in the attack. However he did not take part in the defence either, severely weakening Brian's forces. Though the Vikings were armoured and the Irish were not, the former used swords and battleaxes, which required close-quarters fighting, while the Irish tended to hurl short spears that could kill from a distance, and they had the numerical superiority. Brian's own son, Murchad, is said to have fought valiantly, killing "fifty men with the sword in his left hand and fifty with the sword in his right". That's probably over-romanticised, but the facts of the battle are that there was much death on both sides, and that the fighting was fierce. It's said the battle lasted the entire day, though this again could be down to the poets making more of the story later.

In the end, as darkness began to fall and the Vikings withdrew, pressed by Brian's men, the high tide at Clontarf rose and cut them off from their ships, which were carried away. Didn't they think to anchor them? Did Vikings not have anchors? Anyway, that's the account.  With many of them perishing in the sea as they drowned, others making for the safety of a nearby wood but unable to gain access thanks to the rising tides, the men under Brian Boru surged forth and dealt them a crippling blow. By nightfall, they had proven victorious.

Brian, however, paid a high price for his victory. As the Vikings fled, and while praying in his tent in thanks for their defeat, Brian was discovered by one of the leaders of the opposition, Brodir, who had led the forces from the Isle of Man, and beheaded as he knelt. Shortly afterwards Brodir himself was killed, but the first Irish High King was dead. His son, too, died in the battle, as did his grandson, effectively ending the line of succession. Perhaps ironically, Mael Seachnaill was restored as High King after Brian's death. Brian was given probably the first official Irish state funeral, his body lying in state for twelve days of mourning before being finally buried in Armagh.

Although the power of the Vikings was not broken after the Battle of Clontarf, and indeed Silkenbeard remained as King of Dublin until 1036, though like most of his people in Ireland by now he seems to have converted to Christianity, making a pilgrimage to Rome in 1028, they were no longer invaders, no longer an occupying force. Like other invaders would find as the centuries turned, Ireland was a place that tended to defeat you not by military might, but by its allure of lands and climate. Most of those who attacked Ireland ended up settling in it, intermarrying Irish women and forming alliances, and often defending the country against their own fellows when fresh invasions came.

The next to try would also learn this lesson, though it would take a longer span of time before the Normans would yield up and surrender to the irresistible pull of the Emerald Isle. Their arrival would also echo down the annals of Irish history and change Ireland forever.

[Trollheart]

Chapter IV: The Book of Invasions, Part Three: Boots on the Ground –
The Beginning of Eight Hundred Years of Occupation and Oppression

Timeline: 1073 – 1316

With the death of Brian Boru Ireland descended - or rather, returned -  into petty wars, as claimants to the throne of Ireland (not literally: there was no single throne, no ruling palace or even indeed any idea of real kingship in Ireland, and would not be for hundreds more years, but various chieftains and warlords vied for the position of High King of Ireland) fought among themselves, but nobody was a worthy successor to Brian. As ever, the power of the Christian, and in  particular Catholic Church, would be the real force for change in Ireland, and the real power would rest not in Dublin or Ulster, but in Rome. With increasing dissatisfaction with what it saw as the unacceptably semi-autonomous power of the Church in Ireland, and the reported misuses of power there, the papacy was eager to assert its own control over the island. Pope Gregory VII had already established his absolute accepted rule,not only over the Christian Church, but all of creation (and that surely included Ireland!) so the way was clear, in 1155, for Pope Adrian IV (who just happened to be an Englishman, the only English pope in history) to issue a papal bull.

A papal bull, in case you don't know, was not some sort of pet the pope kept, nor was it a description of doubletalk coming out of the Vatican. It was a letter signed by the Pope, each a formal decree, a command that something must be done. Papal bulls could start or finance wars, revoke kingships or even excommunicate sinners from the Church, denying them the benison of Heaven on their death and banning them from churches. They could also provide annulments of marriages and, as in this case, confer authority upon a person to do something the pope wanted done. The papal bull of 1155, called Laudabiliter ("laudably", or "in a praiseworthy manner") allowed King Henry II of England to invade, at his convenience, Ireland, in order to bring it into line with religious orthodoxy. In other words, the King of England was encouraged to reassert the power of the Pope over the Irish monasteries.

Henry, however, was a little busy, fighting those pesky French, his eternal enemy, so he deferred invasion until such time as it might be possible, or, in the event of the war ending in victory for him, politically expedient. With rather telling Irish tragedy though, it would actually end up being the Irish – or one Irish lord, anyway – who would force Henry's hand and bring his troops to the shores of Ireland, where, once entrenched, we would suffer their yoke and oppression for the next nine centuries. As you read on through this journal, you may get an idea of exactly why Irish people hate English – historically; not so much now, but even when Ireland plays England at football or rugby, the latter is always referred to as "the old enemy".

Prelude to invasion: the Normans

The story is well known in Ireland about Diarmuid MacMurchada who, having abducted the wife of a rival chieftain, had his lands in Leinster confiscated by the closest to a High King Ireland had at the time, the powerful Rory O'Connor. Forced to flee abroad, Diarmuid plotted revenge and swore to regain his kingdom. If you feel bad for him, don't: legend has it that the man said himself he would rather be feared than loved, and any of his enemies he did not have killed outright he had castrated and blinded, so that they could have no progeny who could avenge them. Indeed, the story is told of the time he became incensed because leadership of the Abbey of Kildare had been granted to one of his rivals, and furious he rode there, attacked the place and seized the abbess and had her thrown into a soldier's bed and raped, thereby disqualifying her from holding her position. Not a nice guy!

And forevermore branded as a traitor in Ireland, though some historians see it differently. However the indisputable facts of the case are this: Diarmuid fled to France, where he found the English King, Henry II, engaged in war. Busy as he was, Henry could not spare any troops to help the dispossessed king, but he allowed him to go to Britain and recruit men in his royal name, in return for Diarmuid's promise to submit to him, hold the province of Leinster in his name and offer his daughter to the leader of the troops he would raise.

And he found troops in Wales, men who called themselves Normans. These were the descendants of Vikings who had come to originally raid and then settled in France, in what is now known as (anybody?) Normandy. Gradually acclimatising to and being assimilated by the French lifestyle, they basically became French, and when they invaded England in 1066 led by the famous William the Conqueror, a whole new way of life was stamped on the English nation, and would be visited on the Irish too, a hundred years later. 1167 saw the first wave of Norman troops arrive in Ireland, where they quickly regained Diarmuid's kingdom, and two years later their leader brought more troops, this time taking Dublin and Waterford, sweeping all before them contemptuously.

Strongbow (1130 – 1176)

Having inherited his late father's lands as the Earl of Pembroke in 1149, Richard Fitzgilbert de Clare, known as Strongbow, lost them again when he supported King Stephen when Henry's mother, the Empress Matilda, rode against him but failed to take the throne of England. When Stephen died, and Henry inherited the throne after his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry had his revenge on the rebel earl. Seeking to better his fortunes, Strongbow was receptive when Diarmuid came looking for help to reclaim Leinster by force of arms, and after first dispatching some of his knights to aid the dispossessed Irishman, Strongbow himself followed Diarmuid to Ireland where he began a two-year rule of the country.

1170 saw the arrival of Strongbow and he laid siege with his knights to Dublin and Waterford, taking both towns easily. The Irish had never seen anything like the Normans: they were mounted and armoured, and they used longbows and crossbows, which could kill with great accuracy at a distance, and pierce armour (though the Irish wore none; indeed, they often charged naked into battle), as well as long lances. There was no contest, and Rory O'Connor, the de facto High King of Ireland, was reduced to the role of a provincial king. Diarmuid MacMurchada, who had married his daughter Aoife to Strongbow as part of the agreement, and had hoped not only to regain Leinster but to take all of Ireland and make himself High King, would not live to see this ambition fulfilled. In 1171, a mere year after Strongbow arrived, he died. On his death the kingship of Leinster fell to Strongbow, through Aoife. He was now in total control of the province.

The marriage of Strongbow and Aoife

Rory O'Connor, however, while weakened was still a threat, and the Normans under Strongbow only held Dublin, Wexford and Waterford, a relatively small percentage of the whole of Ireland. In 1171 O'Connor laid siege to Dublin, hoping to starve Strongbow's people into submission. The Irish were not experts at siege: they had no clue what siege engines were, and merely surrounded the town with their troops. After a weak attempt at a truce, wherein his promise to swear fealty to the High King and renounce the feudal ties to his king were rejected, Strongbow engineered a daring attack by day. He literally (so the tales say) caught Rory O'Connor and most of his men bathing in the river Liffey. Unprepared (as you are, when naked) for the assault, the Irish were routed and the story spread of Strongbow's cunning and guile, bringing more Irish lords over to his side and further weakening Rory O'Connor.

But all was not well for Strongbow. He had taken Ireland (well, Leinster) at the command of and under the auspices of King Henry, on condition he hold it as a vassal of the English king. When he offered to renounce this fealty, even though the offer was dismissed, it would not take long for the news to reach Henry. And news of attempted treachery and betrayal never sits well with kings.

Henry II and the arrival of the English

As already related, Henry was no friend to Strongbow, and did not select him for the task of helping MacMurchada regain Leinster; he told the Irish king he had licence to seek aid in his royal name, but did not mention Strongbow. Henry and the Earl of Pembroke had already butted heads, and the king certainly did not trust Strongbow. When his vassal seemed on the point of turning Ireland into a staging point for a possible attack against his former king – which may or may not have been in Strongbow's mind; remember, his roots went back to the Vikings, whose ethos had always been conquest – he decided it was time for him to take a personal hand in things. With the war in France over he was able to turn his attention to this annoying little island, and see how it might become a problem.

In October of 1171, a mere five months after the death of the man who had unwittingly provided him the excuse he needed to come to Ireland, and only two months after Strongbow had married Aoife and taken the kingship of Leinster, King Henry II arrived in Waterford with a massive fleet of four hundred ships. This was a proper invasion, intended to bring the Irish church into line with the Crown and to subjugate the population to its rule. It was the beginning of an occupation which would last well into the twentieth century.

Although Henry II only stayed in Ireland for six months, he ensured that his power and authority there was unquestioned, securing fealty from Irish chieftains – including, eventually, the self-styled High King, Rory O'Connor, who was granted the province of Connaught – and conferring land on barons from among Strongbow and his own contingents, English nobles who were awarded Irish counties, such as Meath, Westmeath and Cavan, which were granted to Hugh de Lacy, one of the king's trusted advisers. Henry's son, John Lackland, who would become King John on the death of his father in 1199, presaging a new century which would be plagued by deprivation and bad governance, rebellion and unrest, and give rise to the legend of Robin Hood, was named Lord of Ireland. And yes, he was the same King John who signed the Magna Carta – not Encarta, kids: that's a whole different thing.

An interesting and indeed important historical event around this time was when Rory O'Connor, former High King of Ireland and now content (without any real choice) to have Connaught for his realm, married off his daughter to Hugh de Lacy,  which not only strengtened ties between Ireland and England but became the point in history to which the direct involvement of the English in Irish affairs can be traced. The status of Ireland was changed from a free independent land to that of a lordship of the English Crown, bringing it  under direct rule of the English king. Meanwhile, John de Courcy, another English baron who had arrived with King Henry, set out for Ulster and took various towns there, setting himself up as the ruler of Ulster. He had done this, however, without the blessing or even the permission of the King, who then sent Hugh de Lacy to rein him in.

The story goes that de Lacy was told that de Courcy was such a religious man that the only time he would take off his armour and shield (which, it was said, he even slept in) was on Good Friday. On that most holy of days, he could be found in the church, praying, and defenceless. Caring, it would seem, nothing for the sanctuary of the church, de Lacy sent his men to apprehend the earl of Ulster, who was taken after a ferocious fight. Hugh de Lacy was then granted the earlship in his place by Henry. De Courcy would spend much of his life in exile, and after an abortive attempt to retake his holding in Country Down, found himself imprisoned by the king.

In addition to their fierce knights and terrifying longbows and crossbows, the Normans were superior to the native Irish in that they believed in towns and settlements, and built castles, many of which survive today. Notable among these are Dublin Castle, which served as the centre of English power in Ireland right up to the Rising and until Ireland's independence was procured in 1922. They introduced the idea of towns and cities to Ireland, though their superior weapons and charging knights could become bogged down in the mazy Irish landscape, which the Irish, familiar with, could navigate much more easily and use to set traps for their enemy. The Normans also introduced the idea of proper commerce to Ireland, with trade guilds set up. These were basically clubs, but vital to be part of. If you were not, for instance, part of the baker's guild, you could not bake. If you weren't a member of the carpenters' guild, you couldn't be a carpenter. And so on. As a way of excluding Irish tradesmen, membership of any guild was restricted to those of English name and blood. The very first "No Irish!" sign, as it were, something that immigrants down the centuries would see and turn away from.

Dublin Castle today

And so the subjugation of the Irish began in earnest: their lands were taken over by Norman barons and they were forced into serfdom to the lords. As the thirteenth century drew to a close, over sixty percent of the land of Ireland was occupied, owned and held by Norman lords loyal to the Crown, but essentially allowed a modicum of autonomy, as the feudal system was introduced to the previous independent island. Franciscan, Dominican and Augustinian orders moved in to "civilise" the Irish Church, taking over the monasteries and building new ones, and stamping their authority – and the authority of the King and the Pope – on the abbeys and monasteries that had enjoyed such independence for so long.

In England, the reign of King John had passed by now and he had been supplanted by the weak Henry III and then by Edward I, who came to be known as "The Hammer of the Scots" (you've seen Braveheart, haven't you?) for his implacable suppression of the Scots' attempt to gain independence. He further impoverished Ireland by taking thousands of fighting men and sending them to war against the Scots, at Ireland's expense. Scotland had her revenge though when the king's son and successor, Edward II, lost to Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314, and his own son Edward Bruce then tried to take Ireland from the Normans, at the behest of the Irish in Ulster. Ireland sent a famous letter to the Pope, The Papal Remonstrance, decrying the conditions the Normans foisted upon them, and asking His Holiness to intervene, but he never did. Well he wouldn't, would he? He had, after all, been the one to urge Henry to go and invade us. Kind of like asking Hitler if he could see his way clear to removing all those nasty concentration camps from Poland! Edward Bruce landed in Ireland in 1315 and though initially he had many successes, and was in fact on the verge of complete victory, nature conspired to overturn his plans.

He failed, mostly due to the terrible famine that was sweeping across Europe at that time, and which had reached Ireland in 1316,  but the power of the Normans was beginning to wane.  Irish power was being re-established by the middle of the fourteenth century, by which time Ulster and most of Connaught were again under the control of the Irish chieftains, and even the Norman invaders were beginning to "go native", adopting Irish customs and language and laws, intermarrying with Irish women and considering themselves, as the quote went, "more Irish than the Irish themselves", resulting in the Statutes of Kilkenny, laws passed by British Parliament which made adopting Irish customs, language and laws illegal.

I'd like to digress here for a moment to recount a very funny story our history teacher told us, to illustrate how sometimes, winging it can be hilarious. He related how one question on the history paper at an exam was "What were the Statutes of Kilkenny?" and one clever dick wrote "The Statutes of Kilkenny were tall stone figures, twenty feet high, and Americans from all over the world came to see them"! Yeah, well I thought it was funny. Anyway, back to the real text.

With the defeat of Edward II at Bannockburn, Robert the Bruce had achieved for the first time that which no other Celtic country could boast: he had taken on England and won. The mythical infallability and superiority of English forces developed an important crack, one the Irish would worry at and exploit over the next few hundred years. The power of the English in Ireland would be further weakened, as would all reigns and all kingdoms across Europe, by a force that not even kings or popes could stand against, and which was believed by many to be a punishment from God.

[Trollheart]

Chapter V: A plague on both your Houses: The Black Death, the War of the Roses and the rise of Kildare.

The Pale

As already related, the power of the English Crown did not establish itself much beyond a few small kingdoms – the counties of Waterford, Wexford and Dublin basically – and anywhere inside that small region controlled by the King was denoted the Pale, or often the English Pale. This word seems to have come from an old word for fortress or stronghold, though there are some differening accounts of its origins. However we can probably best think of it as the equivalent of the Green Area in Iraq, an area wherein the occupying force was located, and which was considered his stronghold. Outside the Pale, the Irish lords ruled, and from this state of affairs comes an old Irish phrase, still occasionally in use today: "beyond the Pale" has come to mean anything that is beyond the bounds of normality or anything that is hard to believe: "You got the promotion instead of me? Ah, that's a bit beyond the Pale now!" and so on. It is often used colloquially to refer to any area outside Dublin as being "outside the Pale".

As the Norman settlers were left inceasingly isolated, the king turning his attention to more important matters such as wars with France, and later, within his own power structure, the Pale slowly shrunk, until by the mid-fifteenth century it comprised a relatively small area which took in Dublin, Louth, Meath and Kildare, and indeed, not all of those counties (see map above), and was shrinking fast. Even within the Pale, while the lords and landowners may have been English and mostly acted as such, the common folk were all Irish, speakng the Irish language and reverting to Irish customs, in spite of the Statues of Kilkenny, which really, nobody obeyed anyway. The fortification and concentration of Dublin and other Norman towns ironically left them more exposed to the great sickness which would soon reach sticky black fingers down from Europe to touch every part of Ireland.

Although it's not strictly part of the history of Ireland specifically, the Black Death did significantly impact the island, as it did just about everywhere else, and is a part of the tapestry of the history of Ireland, if only a relatively small thread. Nonethless, to understand fully its implications for Ireland I think it's necessary to turn the microscope on that small thread and examine it more closely in respect to the rest of the world.

Believed to have originated in China in the fourteenth century, the Black Death, also called the Plague, the Black Plague, the Great Plague and, later, Bubonic Plague, swept across Europe and successfully wiped out what is reckoned to be around forty percent of its population. That's approximately seventy to two hundred million people, over a period of seven years, more than all the deaths in the two world wars of the twentieth century combined. Lack of medical knowledge, as well as poor hygeine practices and the total lack, or understanding of quarantines, led to the disease having free rein across the world, and by the time it had finished its first attack it had infiltrated and wrought massive death tolls in virtually every country, from Asia and Africa to the Middle East and from Russia to all of Europe, including of course Ireland. Later, in the nineteenth century, a resurgence of the Plague would reach Australia and even at the beginning of the twentieth century it would surface in the USA.

Carried by fleas infesting black rats, which came over on ships from China or along the main trade route, the Silk Road, the Plague spread to Europe and nobody had any idea what it was, where it came from, much less how to combat it. What was certain was that it was almost one hundred percent contagious, and once one member of a family was infected, the rest of the family would likely follow. Houses were often boarded up and marked with a red "X" in an extremely crude form of quarantine, though this did not stop the spread of the disease, as the fleas simply hopped through cracks in walls and floorboards and through windows in search of new hosts. Theories abounded (all wrong), from alignment of the planets to bad water, to the famous "miasma" theory, where it was held that the Plague was airborne, and that in order to avoid being infected you should avoid the "bad air" outside and remain indoors. Naturally, this only helped to incubate the disease more quickly and led to more deaths.

Many believed the Black Death to be a curse from God, and who could blame them? If you've read my review of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, or seen the movie, you'll agree that it must have seemed to the people of the time that the world was coming to an end. Nobody could stand against this Plague, and kings and popes were cut down as easily as commoners. Poor suffered with rich, and no amount of barring your door or isolating yourself could stay the dark hand of death, nor could it be bargained with. As we always do in times of crisis, people looked around for scapegoats, culprits, someone to blame, and as would be the case throughout most of recorded history, the Jews became a target, accused of poisoning wells and lepers and gypsies were also attacked. But perhaps the saddest of all these incorrect accusations was the blame levelled on cats.

Specifically, witches. Cats were seen as the familiars, or companion demons, of witches, and had been since the early Dark Ages. Any cat therefore was seen as an agent of the devil, and thousands were burned on pyres in an effort to expel the devil and lift the curse. The irony being, of course, had the cats been left to their natural devices they would in all likelihood have killed the rats who were carrying the fleas. Of course, the fleas if they survived would then just transfer to the cats, so maybe that would not have been such a solution. But because nobody back then even understood how diseases could be transmitted from one person to another, the lack of knowledge worked against them. If knowledge is power, then it probably follows that in most cases, ignorance is weakness and impotence, and the world at large was completely impotent in the face of this inexplicable horror.

Imagine the terror: seemingly all of a sudden, out of nowhere you start to hear of people dying in far-off cities, and then nearer ones. Then outbreaks are reported in your own country. With little in the way of communication there would of course be a dearth of news, but travellers would bring the tales of the death they had seen, and armies and ambassadors, priests and pedlars, sailors and adventurers would all carry news of this great blight advancing across Europe. And then the dread when one of your neighbours died, and the Black Death was suddenly in your town, your village, your city. Or even your castle. And there was no stopping it. Medical science, such as existed. was at best rudimentary and wrong, and offered no solution, no hope. The word "quack" to describe a doctor has come about from the practice medical men had of wearing long, conical masks over their faces stuffed with flowers and herbs to ward off the disease, a very crude form of facemask. But all they could do was bring comfort to the patient (and look vaguely like ducks); there was no way they could save them. They simply did not even know where to start.

The Black Death arrived in Ireland (no I haven't forgotten what I'm writing about) in 1348, two years after it had reached its peak in Europe and five years since it had begun its deadly trip from Central Asia, and was a disaster for the Normans. Already reeling from rebellions, civil wars and the recent European famine, and bereft of any support from the Crown, as the king was busy fighting the French in the Hundred Years's War, the Normans (now beginning to be called Ango-Irish) found that their fortified cities and towns, while superior for defence and protection, were more a breeding ground for the Plague than the more scattered, rural habitations of the native Irish, and as a consequence the Black Death took a heavier toll on the Normans than the Irish.

With their enemy weakened, and no reinforcement looking possible from across the water, the Irish chieftains moved. The first real challenger was Art McMurrough Kavanagh, a descendant of Diarmuid MacMurchada (remember him?) and also, like his ancestor, heir to the throne of Leinster, which he assumed in 1370. For the next forty years he harrassed the Normans, even advancing on Dublin, though he did not take it. In 1394, able to take a break from the Hundred Years' War, King Richard II paid a personal visit to Ireland at the head of an army which has been variously reported as being between five and ten thousand strong. Even at the lower end of the scale of estimates, this still makes it the largest armed force to land on Irish soil in the medieval period. Needless to say, the king quickly quelled all revolt against his authority and all the Irish chieftains swore fealty to him, only to renounce it once he had been recalled to England. He returned five years later but was unable to stay, as he had to return to meet the challenge of the man who would go on to kill him and take his crown, Henry Bolingbroke, who would become King Henry IV.

Into this power vacuum stepped three influential Irish families: the Desmonds controlled much of Kerry and Cork, while the Kildare family were based, obviously, in the county of Kildare. Between their lands, all other southeastern territories were the jurisdiction of the Ormonds. These three families stepped up to add their weight to supporting each faction as the Hundred Years War ended and, in historic terms, the War of the Roses almost immediately begun. Unfortunately for Ireland, we picked the wrong side, with the Fitzgeralds, who were in control of Kildare and Desmond, betting on the House of York, while the Butlers of Ormond supported the House of Lancaster. When Edward IV then won for the House of York initially, he in gratitude granted the governorship of Ireland to the Earl of Desmond, who was later defeated by the O'Connors, and executed by his successor, Lord Tiptoft. In revenge, his brother Gearoid rose in rebellion, and at the end of a bloody campaign Gearoid Mor Fitzgerald, eighth Earl of Kildare, was pronounced Governor of Ireland.

This then began the rise to power of an already powerful family, as Fitzgerald consolidated his power. Even when the final victory in the War of the Roses fell to the House of Lancaster, and Henry VII took the throne, Fitzgerald proved immovable from his position. Despite having been, and remaining, a staunch supporter of the York family, he had too much popular support in Ireland to allow the new king to remove him and replace him with an Englishman, and so, for the sake of peace and to keep the Irish quiet, Henry allowed Gearoid Mor to remain in charge of Ireland, effectively a High King, though nominally subservient to the Crown. This leeway from the English king did not prevent Fitzgerald from supporting two separate pretenders to the English throne as he struggled to unseat his old enemy.

Pretenders to the Throne

With the defeat and death of Richard III, the last king of the house of York was consigned to history, however this did not mean the end of his family, his House or indeed the supporters of that House. The fragility of the claim of Henry VII to the throne, coupled with the outcome of the Hundred Years' War as well as England's seemingly unending enmity for France, meant that it was from there that the plot to unseat Henry and plant a puppet king on the throne of England originated. Coached and groomed by the Duchess of Burgundy, sister to Edward VI, the first king of the House of York, two men were sent to England purporting to be the rightful king and demanding and attempting to enforce the abdication of Henry VII.

Lambert Simnel

No more than a boy of about ten years of age when he became the figurehead for a Yorkist rebellion against the Crown, Simnel was drawn into the plots of older and more devious men when the priest who was schooling him noticed a striking resemblance between him and Edward Earl of Warwick, whom King Richard III had had imprisoned (and some say murdered) in the Tower of London. If people could be convinced he was the son of Richard II it would be agreed that he had a very good claim to the throne, so when the aid of the Duchess of Burgundy was sought she helped school the boy so that he would be able to pass as a nobleman.

Simnel landed in Ireland in 1487 and was crowned as King Edward VI, after which he set sail with Irish and Flemish troops – the former supplied by Gearoid Mor Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare and the latter by Her Grace the Duchess of Burgundy – to assert his claim. Being only ten years old, he was of course merely a pawn, and when his army was defeated the king recognised this and set him to work in his royal kitchens. Thus the Irish had once again backed the wrong horse in trying to reassert the power of York which, unbeknownst to them, would never again see a member of their House sit on the English throne.

Perkin Warbeck

More of a threat however was Perkin Warbeck, who presented himself at the court of the Duchess of Burgundy, claiming to be in fact Richard, Duke of York, the other prince who had been imprisoned in the Tower by Richard III, and believed killed. With monarchies like the Scots and the French taking up his claim, Perkin represented a real threat to the Tudor king, and though he was beaten and this time hanged, his claim dying with him, he again swayed the vote of the Irish, and Gearoid Mor supported him. As a result of this he was dismissed when Perkin was defeated, and his successor, an English noble called Poynings, passed a law in Ireland which prevented the Irish parliament convening or passing any legislation without the express order and consent of the king, to ensure that never again would a pretender be crowned in Ireland.

Gearoid Mor, however, proved to be too formidable a leader to be displaced for long, and a mere four years later he was back in control of Ireland, the Lord Deputy, but in all but name ruler of Ireland. With so much support back home that his arrest and imprisonment led to revolts and rebellions springing up all over Ireland, and the expense of two major wars to attend to, to say nothing of fighting off pretenders to his crown, Henry VII is said to have observed philosophically, "If all Ireland cannot rule this man, he shall rule all Ireland", and Gearoid was re-invested. His claim on power was so strong that when he died in 1512, the Lord Deputyship of Ireland passed directly to his son, Gearoid Og, establishing something of a dynasty, a thing Ireland had not had in its history before.

Although on his ascension to the throne, King Henry VIII also confirmed Geraoid Og as Lord Deputy, his future did not bode well for Catholicism, and in the end, he would go down as the king who finally established direct English rule over Ireland, and began its true religious persecution.

[Saulaac]

Hey TH, good to read ya!
Interesting stuff, and so confusing to keep up with developments.
Roman Catholicism had clearly spread to the outposts i.e. Britain and Ireland.
My mother was from Galway and I always presumed it was the Spanish Armada coming up the west coast of Ireland which stamped their Catholic influence on the nation. But actually Catholicism was already well established right? (until Henry VIII came along that is).

[Trollheart]

Hey TH, good to read ya!
Interesting stuff, and so confusing to keep up with developments.
Roman Catholicism had clearly spread to the outposts i.e. Britain and Ireland.
My mother was from Galway and I always presumed it was the Spanish Armada coming up the west coast of Ireland which stamped their Catholic influence on the nation. But actually Catholicism was already well established right? (until Henry VIII came along that is).

Hey Saulaac! Good to talk to you again.
Yeah, what happened was that after the fall of the Roman Empire the "new" empire, as in, Rome but now run by the Church, sent out missionaries who arrived in Ireland - and England - around about I think the 7th or 8th century (have to check; could have been earlier) to "civilise" and convert the heathen, cos at that time Ireland was into her pagan gods. I'm pretty sure I laid it all out in the first chapter or two, but you might in fact be interested to know that up until the late sixteenth century England was Catholic too, in fact the recently emerging Protestantism (or Lutherism, as it was called at the time) was so banned that they happily burned them as heretics. It was no change of attitude that made England forever Protestant, just a desire by King Henry VIII to get out of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon so he could give Anne Boleyn one, and officially, so that their children would be legit, and if she dropped a son then Henry had the heir he wanted. Didn't quite work out that way of course, but she didn't lose her head over it. Oh, wait: she did.   

[Trollheart]

Chapter VI: The Book of Invasions, Part Four: Terra Incognita, Treachery and The Fall of Ireland

Timeline: 1512-1607

Papal Enemy Number One: Henry VIII and the English Reformation

Having, as I mentioned earlier, only won our independence in 1923, the history and destiny of Ireland has been throughout our long history controlled by outside forces, most notably of course by England, who held sway over us for over eight hundred years. It's therefore necessary, I feel, to look at the major figures who orchestrated the invasion, occupation and governance of Ireland, and as the timeline progresses this is what I will be doing.

Many kings and queens of England of course had a hand in the subjugation of Ireland, and we've already heard about Henry VII and the Normans, but to my mind there's one figure who typifies the antagonism that would come to define the relationship between Irish and English, which would lead to a schism in Irish belief, and to the very sectarianism that plagues our island even today.

When the Celts were under the sway of the Druids, they worshipped gods, but more importantly goddesses; Ireland, though controlled by a patriarchy, was a matriarchal theocracy, or something. Goddesses were big in Ireland, is what I mean, and through the intercession of the Druids laid down the laws by which the Celts lived. When the druids, along with their deities, were driven out of Ireland, the Irish looked to a new mother figure: the Catholic Church. She protected and nurtured them all through the Dark Ages, even into Tudor times, and when one king took on the Pope, it spelled trouble for Ireland, and began a hatred and enmity that has existed to this day.

Henry VIII (1491-1547)


Even those of you with zero interest in history know Henry VIII, if only from the famous portrait that shows him as a fat, lame corpulent man scowling out of the picture. Of course, he wasn't always like this - witness his many marriages, few if any ones of convenience - but this is the popular image we have left of him, just as Shakespeare was also obviously young and handsome at one point, but we now picture him as a balding, oldish man in a high Elizabethan ruff. If we know Henry for anything though, it's likely one of two things (or both): firstly, for having six wives, two of whom were beheaded at his command, and secondly for his spat with the Pope and the formation of the Church of England. None of this would of course endear him to the fiercely Catholic Irish, and his actions during his reign would not help that cause. For those who may have the sketchiest knowledge of one of the most famous and written about English kings, here's a very quick potted history.

Only one of four to survive from the six children born to his father, Henry VII, Henry was already appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at the tender age of three. What this actually meant was that his father, Henry VII, retained control over Ireland and no other noble could request or even demand the position. Nevertheless, though it may have been nothing more than a nominal or symbolic position, the fact remains that from his infancy right through to his death, King Henry VIII's fate would be inextricably and irrevocably linked with that of Ireland. The youngest of the surviving royal children, he was never expected to ascend to the throne, this honour to befall his elder brother Arthur. However Arthur did not reach his sixteenth birthday, dying before he could claim his heritage, and as the two other children were girls, it was Henry who became heir to the throne of England.

Catherine of Aragon

When his father died in 1507 Henry realised his destiny, taking the wife, well, widow, of his late brother Arthur, Catherine, youngest child of the rulers of two powerful Spanish kingdoms, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile, but when she failed to provide him a son (all of her children, boys and girls, being stillborn, and the last one to survive being a girl) he decided to look further afield. Having had an affair with Catherine's lady-in-waiting, Mary Boleyn, he then took a fancy to her sister. But Anne was not content to be a mere king's mistress, and demanded marriage. This meant that Henry's marriage to Catherine had to be annulled, and the only one who could do that was the Pope. There was, however, a problem.

Catherine was aunt to one of the most powerful Spanish rulers, the Holy Roman Emperor himself, Charles V, and Pope Clement VII, reluctant to get on his bad side by sanctioning what would be seen as the public dishonour of Catherine, demurred. Annoyed at this seeming refusal (which it pretty much was) to grant him the freedom to marry again, Henry decided to dissolve the power of the Catholic Church in England, setting himself up as supreme head of the Church, and thereby making an enemy of the Pope. This is curious in a historical context, as the previous Pope, Leo X, had conferred upon Henry the title of "Defender of the Faith" for his defence of papal authority! I guess sentiments like that are fine as long as they fit in with your own requirements.

Henry married Anne Boleyn in 1533 (though technically she had been unofficial queen since 1531, Catherine having been banished from the royal apartments, stripped of her title and no longer recognised as the king's consort) and she gave him one child. It was a girl, which was surely disappointing to Henry at the time, though she would grow up to become one of the greatest rulers England had ever seen. Elizabeth was born on September 7 1533, a mere three months after Anne had been officially crowned as Queen Consort. For his temerity in going against Rome and setting up the Church of England, Pope Clement excommunicated Henry. This meant he was forbidden to attend mass, have his sins forgiven and his soul was damned to Hell for eternity. Henry wasn't worried.

He was worried, however, about the line of royal succession. If there was one duty a king took as seriously as protecting his realm it was securing an heir to continue his dynasty. Not for another twenty years would a woman sit on the English throne, the only one to ever do so up to that point, other than Matilda, whose monarchy is hotly disputed even now, the line of succession always falling to the male heir. If a king were to die without a son therefore, there would be no legitimate king, and infighting would result as those next in line to the throne would all vie for the position. This could lead to civil or even outright war, as in the War of the Roses, as already related, although the king in that case did have an heir, but he was allegedly murdered.

So producing a successor to his reign was of paramount importance to Henry, and while this was the task of the queen, if successive wives failed him then it would be hard to continue pointing the finger at the woman, and suspicion might fall upon the king himself. Apart from the ignominy of being talked of as impotent, the strategic and historical imperatives were clear here: die without an heir and risk plunging England into bloody conflict, in the process leaving her at the mercy of her enemies, who would surely capitalise on her weakness.

Henry's desire to ditch Catherine and take up with Anne however was not purely motivated by regnal duty; he was also a randy old sod, and as king he could have as many mistresses as he liked, but any progeny from such unions would be illegitimate, and therefore ineligible for the throne. To produce a proper, legitimate heir who would be supported by all and whom the law would recognise, Henry had to have a son by his queen.

But that didn't mean it had to be this queen.

When Anne failed to satisfy his need for an heir, Henry had -  perhaps trumped-up - charges of infidelity and adultery levelled against her, branding her a traitor and allowing him to have her executed. He then moved on to Jane Seymour, whom he had been seeing more of (sorry) even as Anne Boleyn awaited her trial and execution. Jane finally gave him the heir he had craved, and which England needed, and Prince Edward was born on October 12 1537. However Henry's joy was cut short as his wife and queen of only a year died twelve days later of complications from the birth. It could be said that though she was the wife who lasted the shortest time, she was also the most loyal, giving him his heir and also her life, though the latter hardly willingly.


Anne of Cleeves

For the first time since ascending the throne of England, Henry needed but did not necessarily desire a new wife, which is to say he was in mourning for Jane, not bored of or frustrated with her, but as king he knew he had to have a queen, and this time one was chosen for him - well, let's say suggested to him: I doubt anyone ever told King Henry VIII what to do. But on the advice of Thomas Cromwell, he married Anne of Cleeves, who then became his fourth wife. But already Henry's eye was wandering, and this time it fixed on a seventeen-year-old niece of the Duke of Norfolk, Catherine Howard, much to Cromwell's annoyance, as her father was a political opponent of his. He was right to be worried, as on the very day of the king's fifth marriage he was accused of treason and executed. No doubt the good Duke had a hand in that.

Catherine would not survive him long though. Embroiled in adulterous affairs, she was caught out and though Henry initially refused to believe his new wife had been unfaithful to him, he was forced to accept the evidence, especially when it came from her own mouth, and Catherine Howard became the second of Henry's so-far five wives to literally lose her head over the king. His final marriage would see him attracted to yet another Catherine, this time Catherine Parr, who had already had three husbands before Henry. She helped him reconcile with his daughters Mary and Elizabeth, resulting in an Act of Parliament that allowed both the girls to join the royal line of succession, paving the way for England's first two queens.

So that's Henry VIII and his famous six wives, but why did the Irish hate him so? Well, clearly when you defied the authority of the Pope you were going to make no friends in a country that, while ruled by English nobles (Normans) was still staunchly and defiantly Catholic, and who after all wants to swear fealty to a heretic? But it wasn't just that. Henry had demanded loyalty to the Crown from Ireland, and this put the Irish nobles in a very tough and unenviable position. Fiercely loyal to the Pope, they did not want to be seen to be going against the wishes of the Holy Father, but Rome was a long way away, much more distant than England, and when Henry declared that all of Ireland must follow "the English way", including worship, he found stiff opposition from the Irish against his plans.

Here I want to pause for a moment, and explain in basic terms how the massive split occurred in the Catholic Church, how that affected Europe, Rome and later England, and by extension Ireland, and how it continues to do so even today, dividing our island along geographical as well as religious lines of orthodoxy, giving rise to conflict, hatred, prejudice and our own horrible version of holy war.

The Rise of Protestantism: Martin Luther goes head-to-head with the Pope

There can be no argument that in the time before, and even during the Renaissance, the Catholic Church was not only a major world power, almost the major world power, a huge player in politics, maker and breaker of kings, and the agency that called for retribution against the heathen with the Crusades, but one of the most corrupt organisations in the world. Successive popes set themselves up as kings, emperors or warlords (or all three), keeping standing armies and enriching their own coffers, more concerned with material wealth than spiritual salvation, while their priests and bishops preached exactly the opposite message to the faithful from the pulpits every Sunday.

A young German monk named Martin Luther had been watching all this misuse of power for some time, but the final straw for him came in 1516, when the Pope at the time, Leo X, sent an envoy to Germany to sell indulgences in order to finance the rebuilding of the church of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Indulgences were, essentially, get-out-of-jail-free cards for Christians, though scrub out the word free. For a payment, large or small depending on the sin to be expunged, penitents could purchase a letter signed by Leo which would then allow a soul held in Purgatory (transient state between Heaven and Hell) to be released into Heaven. Basically you were paying for the soul of your mother, father, child, wife, whoever, who had died, to be sprung from Limbo.

The phrase "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings,The soul from Purgatory springs" so enraged Luther that he wrote to the Pope, decrying the practice of indulgences, and asking, quite reasonably really, why a man so incredibly wealthy as Leo X, reckoned at the time to be one of the richest men in the world, if not the richest, had to rely on the contributions of the poor to rebuild a church when he had the money to do so out of his own pocket? Instead of answering this accusation, the Pope decided to brand Luther a heretic and excommunicated him, in the same way as he would deal with England's upstart king a decade later.

But Luther would not be so easily silenced. He saw the rot in the Catholic Church, most especially at its venerated head, and the disrespect that the man supposedly chosen by God as His agent on Earth paid to the office, and he and his followers broke with Rome, splintering into their own religion, which though still Christian would be rabidly opposed to Catholicism. It was, of course, called Protestantism. As already noted, the later heretic King Henry VIII initially defended the Pope against this blasphemer, only to find himself, perhaps not allied with Luther's ideals so much as using them for his own expediency, but certainly on the same side as the German reformer.

This of course put the king of England on a collision course, theologically and ideologically with the Irish, but it wasn't just esoteric concerns that upset them. Having broken with Rome, Henry now felt entitled to break up the English monasteries, which were of course run by Catholic monks and abbots, and seize their assets for the Crown. This became known as "the dissolution of the monasteries", and this was bad enough, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, he then ordered the same fate for the monasteries in Ireland. These had existed, more or less unbothered by the Crown, for centuries, and had survived invasions both Viking and Norman. The dissolution of the monasteries was a direct and very public middle finger from England to Rome, and shocked and angered the Irish, who still considered themselves mostly the Pope's subjects. Although the dissolution of the monasteries represented a seismic shift in English royal policies, Henry's action was neither unprecedented nor unique throughout Europe.

As the rise of Protestantism and Anglicanism, both versions of Lutheran teachings, gripped Germany and expanded outside its borders to places such as Switzerland, Holland, Scotland  and even fiercely Catholic France, the idea of monasteries was slowly being eroded. Monasteries were quintessentially a Catholic, or as some preferred to call them, papist idea, and those who no longer wanted anything to do with Rome wanted all trace of their power removed from their countries. In that context, then, it's not at all to be wondered at that Henry wished to reinforce his own power as the new Supreme Head of the Church of England, and remove the agents of the Pope. Of course, the fact that these monasteries stood on choice land and contained valuable artifacts that could be sold, or melted down, and used to fill the king's coffers, didn't hurt either.

However in Ireland things were different, and Henry had a much harder time putting his plan into operation. For one thing, having been for a very long time the centre of Catholicism, even when the Roman Empire held sway over the Eternal City, Ireland had a lot more monasteries, convents and friaries than England did. About twice as many, in fact. Henry's authority in Ireland was quite nominal; though he was officially declared King of Ireland, in reality his power only extended to the area around the Pale (as discussed in a previous entry) and so in order to work his will he had to make deals with local Irish lords. This meant that the land, and the wealth of the monasteries mostly went to these compliant lords as compensation, so the Crown saw little return for its efforts. In fact, up to the time of the accession of Elizabeth, Henry's daughter, half of the monasteries in Ireland had not been dissolved.

[Trollheart]

The Revolt of Silken Thomas and the Fall of the House of Kildare

Realising that the most powerful family in Ireland at that time were the Fitzgeralds, the Earls of Kildare, Henry summoned Gearoid Og (son of already mentioned Gearoid Mor, the de facto High King Henry VII had grudgingly installed) to London and imprisoned him in the Tower. However the Englishman sent to Ireland to replace him found it an impossible task, and Gearoid Og returned home in triumph, but was summoned back to London in 1534, and this time died there. Before he left for England though, wary of the king and remembering his previous treatment, Gearoid Og left his son Thomas, Lord Offaly, in charge, warning him to ignore any summons to England and to be on his guard against the Irish Council, whom Gearoid did not trust. Thomas, Lord Offaly, is known to history as Silken Thomas.


Mindful of his father's cautions, Silken Thomas - so called due to the finery he was purported to wear - rode to Dublin and crashed a meeting of the Irish Council, slamming down the ceremonial sword of office that marked him as vice deputy in front of the lord chancellor, and declaring his opposition to the Crown. He then massed his troops, demanding all Englishmen be expelled from Ireland and calling for allegiance to the Pope, in the process hoping for aid from Rome and from Spain, but none arrived. Once again, however, it was not the English who defeated an Irish revolt but in-fighting and score-settling among the Irish themselves. Jealous of the power of the Kildares, the Butlers saw a chance to break that dynasty and fought against Silken Thomas's army, defeating him and sending him to England, where he was executed in 1537.

Enraged at the revolt, and sensing also a chance to break the power of the Kildares forever, with Gearoid Og and his son both dead, Henry sent a sizeable army - somewhere in the region of around two thousand men - to lay siege to the stronghold of the Kildares, Maynooth Castle, his army bringing with them artillery, the first time this had been used in Ireland. The outcome was a foregone conclusion, and the defeat of the most powerful family in Ireland was quickly accomplished. Worried that their tacit support for the rebellion might anger the king, the Irish lords moved quickly to confirm Henry as Head of the Church of Ireland.

The Kingdom of Ireland

Having no choice but to send settlers to colonise Ireland and thus regain control of the lawless land, Henry used a practice called "surrender and regrant". What this meant was that the Irish lords would surrender their lands to the Crown, who would grant them back to them, under multiple conditions. First, and most importantly, they must swear fealty to Henry and renounce the authority of the Pope. Second, they must take English peerage titles and abandon their traditional Irish titles. They had to attend parliament, speak English and undertake English customs, live by English laws and encourage the spread of the same throughout their holdings.

In return they would be granted a royal charter to confirm their ownership of the lands, and the protection of the Crown. In 1541 Ireland was declared a kingdom, no longer just a lordship as it had been, and all its inhabitants considered subject to the English Crown. In some ways though it would be separate, with its own House of Lords and House of Commons, and its own courts. The Church of Ireland was established as the state church under Henry, and the dissolution of the monasteries was passed by a compliant Irish parliament. Nevertheless, for all their subservience, the Irish people never acceded to Protestantism and the Reformation in Ireland was pretty much a failure.

Three's Not Company: Political Factions in Ireland

Around this time then you had three separate social and ethnic groups in Ireland, who are designated as a) the Old English, who were descendants of the original Norman settlers, b) the Old Irish, no explanation needed there and c) the New English, the settlers who arrived during Henry's reign. Of these three groups, only the last took to the Reformation, being not only staunch Protestants but also Puritans, the toughest, most uncompromising and most hardline opponents of Catholicism (it was of course these who would later sail away from persecution in the seventeenth century to find a new life in a new world, as they departed aboard the Mayflower, bound for America, where they would become the Founding Fathers of that embryonic nation). Both the Old English and Irish clung to their old religion, devoted to the Pope, the former the richest of the three groups while also possessing the most land.

Hatred would of course erupt between the New English and their other counterparts, both English and Irish, but in 1542 the Counter-Reformation was underway and Jesuit and Franciscan monks arrived in Ireland to minister to the population, bolster the observance of the Catholic faith, and ensure forever the defeat of the Reformation in Ireland, a momentous event that left our tiny island unique in being ruled by a Protestant monarch but practicing our own religion.

The death of King Henry VIII would allow his son, Edward, to succeed him as Edward VI, but this was at age nine, and so for his six-year reign power would be in the hands of his regents the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland. A sickly lad, he would die in 1553.  England would thereafter experience fifty years of female monarchy, as the first woman to officially sit on the English throne would avenge her father's persecution of Catholics by reversing the trend, while her sister, succeeding her, would become one of the most famous rulers in English history, and practice a more lenient attitude towards the worship of her subjects. Both would, however, impact negatively upon the history of Ireland, which would stubbornly refuse to bend the knee to the English Crown, and would pay a heavy price for her disobedience and rebellion.

Bloody Mary - Mary I (1553-1558)
Anxious that his Catholic sister Mary should not ascend the throne and undo all the reforms he and their father had instigated, Edward named Lady Jane Grey in his will, a cousin once removed, but she lasted a mere nine days after the young king's death, when she too was put to death and Mary was crowned Queen of England and Ireland. How the Irish must have celebrated, overjoyed that a Catholic now sat on the English throne! Sadly for us, it made no difference. Mary was as unfeeling towards the "troublesome Irish" as had been her predecessors, and she went ahead with the plantation of the counties of Offaly and Laois, closest to the areas outside the Pale, determined to Anglicise Ireland once and for all.

Mary attained her dark sobriquet, however, not due to her persecution of the Irish but of her own countrymen, the  Protestants of England. Once the ruling class and favoured state religion for over forty years, these were now urged to recant their beliefs or be burned at the stake for heresy, a threat she put into horrible practice. Although Mary was married to the Spanish King Philip II, he was not proclaimed as King of England, merely jure uxoris, a kind of "queen's consort" title for a male, sort of like I assume, had America a female president, her husband would be, what, First Gentleman? Also something similar, maybe, to the position Prince Albert occupied when married to Queen Victoria later. Anyway, Philip was never King of England, merely the husband of the Queen. The close involvement, however, of the Spanish king allowed Mary to repair the relationship with Rome which had fractured under her father's reign, and England came once again under the jurisdiction of the Pope. Tellingly though, the monasteries seized by Henry VIII were not returned to the Church.

Mary was a cruel woman. Even after he recanted his faith, having watched his brother bishops being burned alive, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was forced to go to the stake too. The burnings of what would later become Protestant martyrs were highly unpopular, even among the Spanish, but Mary persisted with the persecution and burning of Protestants until her death in 1558.

Elizabeth I (1533-1603)
Surely one of the most famous and celebrated of England's monarchs, and the second woman (discounting Matilda in the far past and Lady Jane Grey's nine-day reign) to occupy the English throne, Elizabeth banished forever the idea of pure male succession in England. From her reign on (well, from Mary's, but that was so relatively short and fraught with anger and fear that it didn't do much to sweeten the people's attitude towards a Queen) both men and women could be expected to rule if their claim was legitimate. Speaking of which, Elizabeth, as the daughter of Anne Boleyn, whose marriage to Henry had been annulled by the Pope, was seen as illegitimate, and proclaimed as such by Pope Pius V. More, he pronounced her a heretic, and called for all Catholics to rise up against her and overthrow her, calling her "the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime". He also warned that any Catholics who obeyed her or swore allegiance to her risked excommunication, absolving them from their loyalty to her and encouraging them to support her rival, Mary Queen of Scots.

In the event, the attempts by Mary's Scottish and French supporters to dethrone or indeed assassinate Elizabeth all failed, and Mary was executed, leaving Elizabeth as the unchallenged Queen of England, and the Pope as a lasting enemy as she confirmed Protestantism as the state religion. Unlike her sister and predecessor, however, Elizabeth did not force her subjects to conform to her own religion, and allowed them to worship as they saw fit, once they swore loyalty to the Crown.

Which is, of course, where Ireland once again comes in.

Although Elizabeth took a much less hardline approach to religion than had Mary or Edward, or her father before them, she had no patience with those who tried to convert Protestants to the Catholic faith in order to draw them away from their allegiance to her, fulfilling Pius's edict, and the missionaries that arrived in England to do just that were hunted, persecuted and executed. This naturally did not go down well in Ireland, and though Elizabeth herself, who disparagingly referred to Ireland as "that barbarous and rude country", declared no harm would come to the Irish, she turned a blind eye (or gave tacit, plausible deniability-like approval) to the efforts of her commanders there to put down the many rebellions that sprung up against her rule, and indeed, between rival Irish families, as it had ever done.

Blood Ties, Bloodshed and Blood Oaths: Rivalries in Ireland

Two of the then most powerful Houses in Ireland were the Ormonds and the Desmonds in the south. After a failed rebellion by the Desmond Fitzgeralds in 1573, their leader, James Fitzmaurice, sailed to Europe in search of Catholic support to overthrow the heathen English. This gave the new pope, Gregory XIII, the chance to sow mischief for the heretic queen, and he promised 1000 men, at the head of whom James Fitzmaurice landed near Dingle in Kerry, bearing papal letters that exhorted the Irish and the Irish lords to defy the queen and rise up against her in the name of Rome and the Catholic faith.

Unfortunately, the pope's men were easily outnumbered by the English forces, and they were trapped and massacred. A terrible revenge ensued, as Elizabeth's commanders carried out a scorched-earth policy, reducing the south to a smoking wasteland as famine walked the land, all cattle and livestock having been slaughtered by the English in addition to the wholesale murder of the populace. This defeat and the ravaging of their earldom put paid to the Fitzgeralds of Munster, and like their cousins the Earls of Kildare under Henry VIII, their power was forever broken. Their lands were confiscated by the Crown and given to English settlers, as the policy of plantation took hold, something that would continue to be the English answer to subduing Ireland over the next few centuries.

Across the border though, things were very different. For anyone who may know something of Irish history and/or geography, it should be pointed out that at this time all of Ireland was one: the division we have today which created Northern Ireland and the Republic was a long way away, and the entire island of Ireland was one country, under Irish control. Ulster, the northern province, had resisted the English more fiercely than its southern cousins, and Elizabeth found it hard to break them, as almost all of Ulster was still Irish. In addition, there were no maps the English could follow that showed them what lay beyond what we now know of here as the border: none had been made, and none were encouraged obviously. Ulster was, to the English, terra incognita, as unknown and wildly terrifying as Darkest Africa - and probably as dangerous.

The ruling family in Ulster was the O'Neills, and The O'Neill was Shane, who brooked no opposition to his rule, striking from his stronghold of Tyrone and demanding fealty from every other lord. English expeditions who ventured into Ulster typically became lost, then ambushed, and were never heard from again. In an effort to come to a compromise with Shane, the queen invited him to London, where he was made a Captain of Tyrone, but on his return, as he attacked other lordships, he was defeated by an alliance of his enemies and killed. However, his successor would go on to be one of the most famous and dangerous men in Irish history.

[Trollheart]

Hugh O'Neill and the Nine Years War: Ulster Stands Alone



Banished at an early age from Ulster by Shane O'Neill, who feared his claim to the lordship of Tyrone, Hugh was brought up at the English Court, and was in fact made Earl of Tyrone in absentia. Though he had lived his adolescence in England, Hugh hated the English and their occupation of his native land, and planned a rebellion, which would in fact turn into a war. He waited his chance, and when Shane O'Neill was killed and then succeeded by Turlough Luimneach, he became The O'Neill on Turlough's death in 1595.

When the lord of Fermanagh, Hugh Maguire, fought back against English incursions into his land, he was aided by Red Hugh O'Donnell (no, I don't know why so many people were called Hugh in Ulster: must have been a Nordy thing, as we say here in the south) and eventually he would form an alliance with O'Neill as they took on the English together. As The O'Neill, and also Earl of Tyrone, Hugh had the clout to enlist Scottish warriors, Irish mercenaries and even Spanish aid from Philip II. However he did not at first show his hand so early, siding with the Englishman chosen to impose the authority of the Crown on Ulster, Sir Henry Bagenal. There was bad blood between the two men, as Hugh had abducted Sir Henry's sister and married her without his consent. She had later died, some say as a result of a broken heart over the infidelities of Hugh, who seems to have become bored and uninterested in her once he had accomplished his adventure. In time, these two men would face off against each other, but for now they were allies, if uneasy ones.

The execution of The MacMahon in Monaghan, along with the seizing of other counties by the English invasion force pushed more and more Irish chieftains into opposition against Bagenal, and Hugh O'Neill, realising that Queen Elizabeth had no intention of granting him any royal commission that would give him power in Ulster - he had hoped or expected to be named Lord President - switched sides, deciding that his loyalty to his homeland was stronger than his ambition, at least as far as English rule went. Besieging the English castle at Monaghan, O'Neill engaged his erstwhile ally as Bagenal marched to its defence. The two-day Battle of Clontibret was the first major defeat for England in the Nine Years War, and demonstrated that Hugh O'Neill was a capable commander, a charismatic leader and a focal point for Irish resistance, and an enemy to be respected and feared.

Only a few hundred are known to have perished in the Battle of Clontibret, but the next time Bagenal and O'Neill clashed it would be much different, and only one would survive to tell the tale. A mere three years later O'Neill had again besieged an English fort, this time Lord Deputy Thomas Burgh's one on the River Blackwater, and Bagenal, after some argument with the authorities at Dublin Castle, marched to relieve it. O'Neill gathered his forces, pulling in reinforcements from Red Hugh O'Donnell, whom he had previously been hunting with Bagenal. The English learned too late there was a very good reason why they hadn't ventured too far into Ulster: the territory. It was hilly, rocky, mucky and provided little cover. The Ulstermen knew it intimately, the English were completely out of their depth. Cue ambush after ambush, and a major victory scored for the Irish in the Battle of Yellow Ford, wherein Sir Henry was killed by the man who had originally come back to Ulster as his ally.

Significantly, and as was to prove the case for centuries to come, the southern Irish did not support O'Neill, though he requested their help to push the Protestants out of Ireland. Their shared religious belief was not enough to overcome their aversion to the "wild Irish" and they still considered themselves at heart English, and loyal to the Crown. However, the aid of the Spanish raised the stakes for Elizabeth, who could not afford to allow Philip to gain a foothold in Ireland, a staging post from which he could launch an invasion of England, and so the repression of the Irish rebellion in Ulster - now a war really, hence the name - was stepped up and more commanders sent in to pacify, and destroy the resistance.

Not by any means for the first, nor the last time, did old enmities, bribes and pure enlightened self-interest among the Irish families lead to their defeat. After the Earl of Sussex had returned in disgrace to London, having failed to achieve his and Elizabeth's objective even with 17,000 men, command of the English forces was given to Lord Mountjoy, who proved a more savage prosecutor of the war against the Irish, making great gains in Leinster and Ulster. He bought off though one of the major Irish chieftains, Finghin MacCarthy, who promised to remain neutral and therefore did not respond to Hugh O'Neill's demand for reinforcements for James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald of Munster, leaving the earl on his own to face Mountjoy, and soon to be defeated. MacCarthy got his though, as the treacherous English repaid his collaboration by arresting him along with Fitzgerald and putting both to death, thereby effectively ending resistance in the south.

In Ulster, now standing alone, Mountjoy continued to advance, his army now all but unstoppable, driving O'Neill and his forces back. But Hugh was waiting for his allies from Spain to arrive, which they did in 1601. Like the original Spanish armada though, this fleet of ships fell foul of the temperamental English weather and was scattered, a third of the six thousand troops having to return to Spain. The remaining 4000 landed at Kinsale and dug in to await the arrival of O'Neill, and the final battle.

The Battle of Kinsale (1600)

Hearing of the landing of the Spanish, Mountjoy rode to besiege them, and O'Neill, reluctant to venture into enemy territory in the south, delayed his march from his stronghold as autumn turned to a particularly bad winter. Finally realising that if he let the now surrounded Spanish force be defeated, further aid from Spain would dry up,  O'Neill marched to face the English and help his allies, who were at this point in a bad way, most of their arms and ammunition having been taken back to home port on the ships that had had to turn back during the storms.

But in the freezing and wet winter weather, as Christmas Eve 1600 approached, and the forces of O'Neill and O'Donnell arrived at Kinsale, it was obvious things were not going to go their way. Far from home, on unfamiliar territory and without the cover of their beloved bogs and forests of Ulster, the Irishmen were easy prey for the English cavalry and artillery, and they and the Spanish were routed in the final pitched battle between Irish and English for another several hundred years. The Spanish, surrendering while unaware that reinforcements from their king were already on the high seas, were allowed return home with honour. The fleet due to join them, on hearing of the defeat at Kinsale, also turned and headed home. Spain would no longer involve herself in Irish military affairs.

The Flight of the Earls and the End of Free Ireland

Broken, beaten and in disarray, the two main leaders of the rebellion fled, O'Donnell to Spain where he died a few months later, O'Neill back to Ulster where he fought on in what was becoming a hopeless war, and in which he admitted defeat in 1603, signing the Treaty of Mellifont in which he swore fealty to the Crown. English anger at the lenient terms allowed him and the other rebel lords forced him and Red Hugh O'Donnell's father, Rory, The MacHugh of Fermanagh and other Irish lords to take a ship out of Ireland for Spain, in the hope of raising an army to retake their homeland. This became known in Irish history as "The Flight of the Earls."

Blown off-course on their way to Spain, the earls landed instead in France, from whence they made their way to Rome, but though they were welcomed no monarch was willing to lend them military support, either in fear of the might of the victorious English army, or out of political necessity, unwilling to make an enemy of a country with whom they were not currently at war. Add in the fact, not inconsiderable, that after nine years of conflict the greatest chieftain in Ireland had been roundly defeated by the English, and a new offensive under his leadership seemed doomed to fail. Who, after all, backs the losing horse again?

So none of the earls ever saw Ireland again, living and dying in self-imposed exile, while the country they left behind, leaderless now, fell to the merciless English sword. Ulster was planted, settlers from Scotland and England, all Protestant of course, encouraged to move onto the land and build upon it, the native Irish reduced to little more than slaves. Thus did Ulster become almost an outpost of England, which it still is today, but more on that later.

Elizabeth did not live to see the eventual defeat of Ireland, dying in March of 1603, only six days before O'Neill's surrender, and succeeded by her cousin Mary's son, James VI of Scotland, who then became James I of England. It was however through her efforts that Ireland was subdued, even if James reaped the rewards of such a successful campaign.

Ireland's last gasps of resistance died in the Battle of Breifne, where Brian Og O'Rourke was defeated by his half-brother Tadhg, aided by Henry Folliot and Rory O'Donnell (who would later flee Ireland with O'Neill and MacHugh and the other earls), bringing at last all of Ireland under undisputed and unchallenged English rule.

To paraphrase H.G. Wells: Ireland belonged to the English.

[Trollheart]

Chapter VII: Under the English Heel, Part I: New Kingdoms for Old

Timeline: 1603 - 1658

On the death of Elizabeth in 1603 the son of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, James, who had reigned as King James VI in Scotland, became James I of England, uniting all three realms - England, Scotland and Ireland - under one monarch, and thus becoming James I, King of England and Ireland. Although as a Protestant he was initially tolerant towards Catholics, even Irish Catholics, the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby and other rebellious English Catholics hardened his attitude towards those not of his faith (and therefore seen as disloyal) and in accordance with this new policy he accelerated the policy of plantation of Ireland begun by his predecessor.

The idea of plantation was basically not only just colonisation but also control. Grants were given to families - always noble ones of course, and loyal ones too - mostly in Scotland and England, who would settle the land in Ireland and swear allegiance to the king. They were abjured to speak only English, follow the Protestant faith and assist in breaking the control of Irish lords over the country. With the Flight of the Earls in 1607 there was little left to stand against English rule of the country, and the most fiercely Irish and resistant of the provinces was singled out for special attention, plantation that would forever change the northern half of Ireland, and lead to the state of affairs we have today.

The Plantation of Ulster

Spearheaded by the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir Arthur Chichester, the Plantation of Ulster involved confiscation of their traditional and ancestral lands from Irish chieftains, these including the strongholds of the exiled earls of Ulster, the Irish reduced to little more than serfs on land which had once been theirs. Six counties were to be planted in all - Cavan, Fermanagh, Derry (renamed to Londonderry), Donegal, Tyrone and Armagh. In time these would become the "six counties" of Northern Ireland and be under British control and rule, while the other twenty-six counties south of the border would become the Free State and later the Republic of Ireland, as is the situation today.

The new landowners were forbidden to rent land to Irish tenants or employ Irish workers, and had to ensure their new settlements were protected against Irish rebellion. They were also banned from selling land to Irish people. Unsurprisingly, all the lands previously owned by the powerful Catholic Church was granted to the Protestant Church of Ireland, in the hope that the population could be converted and the power of the Church of Ireland stretch across Ireland. In general this did not happen, due mostly to the language barrier. Protestant English and Scottish clerics spoke only English, while the population of Ulster were all native Irish speakers. The plantation itself also suffered from many setbacks, some of these being due to the English casting their net too wide.

Around this time the first permanent English colony had been established in America, the plantation town of Jamestown in Virginia, and many of the guilds and firms who had intended to support and finance the Ulster Plantation by investing capital and infrastructure in Ireland decided instead to sink their money into opportunities in the New World. Many of the settlers, too, originally keen to colonise Ulster, changed their minds and headed over the Atlantic. As surely must have been expected by James and his ministers, the plantation of Ulster did nothing to quell anti-English sentiment among the native Irish; in fact, it fuelled and fanned the flames, and led, inevitably - though not in his reign - to rebellion. Again.

Don't Lose Your Head, Your Majesty: Charles, Cromwell and the Irish Confederate Wars

Distraught and angry at their fall, Catholic lords petitioned the new king, Charles I, for the restoration of their lands and right to worship, in what were known as The Graces. Put off by Charles, the lords then attempted a coup by taking Dublin Castle, the seat of English rule in Ireland, but failed. They worried that an invasion of Ireland was coming, as Scottish and English Parliamentarians, impatient with the weakness of the king, drew England closer to civil war and into what would become known as The War of the Three Kingdoms. No, it's not the latest volume in A Song of Ice and Fire: this one was real, and involved, well, three kingdoms: England, Scotland and Ireland. Ireland's contribution to it would be known as the Eleven Years' War.

Bad harvests, poor weather and spiralling interest rates all helped to create a crucible in which dispossessed Irish nobles and even peasants heated the steel of rebellion, and given that it had been so heavily planted, and had been the most aggressive opponent of English rule, it's no surprise that the leaders of the rebellion came from Ulster. Hugh (yeah, another one!) Og MacMahon and Conor Maguire planned to take Dublin Castle, while confederates Pheilim O'Neill and Rory O'Moore were charged with taking Derry and northern towns in Ulster. As usual though, it was a traitor who sold them out, and MacMahon and Maguire were arrested.

O'Neill and O'Moore did better though, taking several forts in the north and calling on all of Ireland to join them, most of which did, provoking a disproportionate response from the English, who sent troops in to massacre the populations of Wicklow and Cork, though the rebellion had been planned as, and mostly succeeded as, bloodless. In Ulster, rebels rose with a vengeance and descended on the hated settlers, vowing "We rise for our religion. They hang our priests in England!" The intended bloodless coup/rebellion quickly spun out of control, with more and more people now killed rather than just being beaten up and robbed, and horrible massacres in Ulster, including at Portadown, Armagh and in Kilmore, where not even children escaped being burned alive by the Irish. As ever, there were atrocities on both sides, as settlers fought back and often took the initiative, taking the fight to the Irish, and it's hard to say who was the more savage or inhuman.

The Enemy of My Enemy: Charles I (1600-1649)

After five hundred years of resentment against the English invader and later occupier, and standing against a total of twenty-one monarchs of England, why did the Old English - and the Irish lords themselves - decide to ally themselves to the Protestant king of England in 1642? To answer that question, we need to look a little into the way Charles I governed, married and indeed how he was perceived by his people, especially parliament.

Second son of James I, Charles succeeded to the throne on the death of his father in 1625, the previous claimant, his elder brother Henry Frederick having died thirteen years previously at the ripe old age of eighteen. Wishing to emulate the absolute monarchs of Spain and France, Charles demanded the divine right of kings be conferred upon him. In essence, this was an ancient belief that the power of a monarch was given to him directly by God, and so as a result he was subject to no authority on Earth. In effect, he could do what he liked, pass what laws he wanted, raise or lower taxes, wage war, all without needing the consent of parliament. But England had been a constitutional monarchy since 1217, when Magna Carta delineated and imposed restrictions on monarchs, and parliament, unsurprisingly, was reluctant to lose the power it held: the king or queen basically had to request funds for wars from parliament, and if they disagreed, no dice. In this way, King Henry V was prevented/counselled to avoid war with France in 1414, before finally being fronted the funds to pursue his claim to the French throne.

Charles had also alienated many in court and almost all of parliament by marrying a French princess, a Catholic, and by watering down (perhaps at the insistence/request of his wife, perhaps not) the stringent rules governing Protestant worship in England and Scotland. He angered the Scots by trying to impose his own diluted Anglican religion upon the fiercely Presbyterian northerners, and drew the ire of Oliver Cromwell, then a mere Member of Parliament but vehemently and zealously opposed to the king's rule and religion, and who would later command the armies who would oppose and eventually defeat him in the English Civil War.

Because the parliament, and Cromwell in particular, a rising figure therein, were so hardline Protestant - he was a Puritan and so were many of them, regarding all Catholics as heretics - the Old English and the Irish feared what might happen - what surely would happen - should the parliamentarians, or roundheads, be victorious in the Civil War. They therefore allied themselves to Charles and his Cavaliers, the Old English deciding that siding with other Catholics, or at least non-Puritans, even if they were their old adversaries the Irish, was the best and safest policy. Of course, this meant they had technically chosen the wrong side, but the chances are that no matter who won the English Civil War, it would not have ended well for Ireland.

The outbreak of the English Civil War in October 1642 provided the embattled Irish some breathing space as troops were recalled to England to fight for Charles against Parliament and the forces of Oliver Cromwell. They set up the Irish Confederacy, with its headquarters in Kilkenny, and with little opposition now, they retook and ruled most of Ireland, though they spent three years in pointless negotiations with the English, leading up to the arrival of a victorious Cromwell in 1649. The new Lord Protector, having presided over the defeat and execution of the king himself, and the abolition of the monarchy and establishment of the English republic, was in no mood to play games.

[Trollheart]

The Devil is an Englishman: Cromwell in Ireland

Not only a Protestant but a Puritan, the worst kind for Catholics, Oliver Cromwell took effective reign over England December 16 1653, declaring himself not king but Lord Protector, and the realm now a republic, the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. Concerned over the possibility of a Catholic uprising in Ireland, led by the defeated Royalists who had allied with the Irish there, and also as part of a commitment already made during the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Cromwell took a large army across the Irish Sea to subdue Ireland once and for all.

It's good to note (sarcasm detector overloading!) that good old financial imperatives also played a part in the invasion and subsequent conquest of Ireland. Over ten million pounds had been borrowed by Parliament to put down the Irish Rebellion, and that money was to be repaid by the granting of land seized from Irish lords. Rumblings of discontent in the army since the end of the Civil War didn't help, so soldiers needed something else to apply their attention to. Last and possibly most unfortunate for the Irish was the fact that Cromwell, a rabid Puritan, considered all Catholics to be heretics, making the invasion of Ireland a personal and religious crusade for him and his followers.

There would be no mercy, and even today, while Cromwell is feted in England (despite being the only man in history responsible for the execution of a sitting English king) he is a figure of hatred in Ireland, remembered for his brutality, his intransigence and his contempt for the Irish people.

England's Shame: the Massacres at Drogheda and Wexford

After the Battle of Rathmines was quickly and decisively lost by the Irish, the port of Dublin was open to Cromwell's invasion force, and he duly landed on August 15 1649 and proceeded to Drogheda, another coastal town and an important port for resupplying his troops. Having ordered the garrison there to surrender, and been rebuffed, Cromwell laid siege to the town. Note: in a weird aside I've just discovered that one of the commanders of the defenders of Drogheda was called Colonel Wall, while a corresponding commander in the New Model Army was called Colonel Castle! Castle, Wall, and they were besieging a walled fort? How weird is that? But back to the slaughter.

Drogheda was taken in a matter of hours, (on September 11: go figure, huh?) and though prisoners were promised they would be spared if they surrendered, Cromwell, probably with the atrocities (as he would have seen it) of the murdered settlers who perished at Irish hands in the 1641 Rebellion in mind, gave no quarter and ordered his men to kill everyone. Churches were looted and burned, houses ransacked, rapine and murder both condoned and approved. Sir Arthur Aston, in command of the garrison and a staunch Roman Catholic, was reportedly bludgeoned to death with his own wooden leg. Soldiers who took refuge in a church were burned to death, some of them killed as they rushed from the flames, while another two hundred or so who had retreated into two towers were killed or shipped as slaves to the West Indies. The heads of sixteen officers were cut off and placed on spikes along the road to Dublin, and any clergy within the town were clubbed to death by the English soldiers.

It's not known, but surely is likely, that many civlilans as well as defenders of the town were killed. Though no accounts verify this, if you put yourself in the boots of an English soldier who has just won a hard-fought victory and been told to "give no quarter" to the defenders, and given that these were men whose blood was up and who, also, believed all Catholics to be heretics, then it doesn't appear to me that they were going to make too many distinctions between armed men and defenceless ones, or indeed women, or possibly even children. Certainly, taking Cromwell's anger at the casualties he suffered taking the town, his hated of Ireland and Catholics, his fury that these upstart "barbarous wretches" should have supported the now-dead king, and remembering the massacres of 1641, I doubt there can be much reason to suppose he was able to, or wanted to, separate the two.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, and without any real evidence to back such figures up, Irish Catholic sources claimed, over a hundred years later, that four thousand civilians had been executed by Cromwell's troops and called it "unparalleled savagery and treachery beyond any slaughterhouse". Regardless, what happened at Drogheda was certainly close to a war crime, and is remembered here in Ireland as such, one of the many reasons that the name of Oliver Cromwell is spat on and reviled even today. It had the desired effect at the time, though, of demoralising and terrifying the Irish, who fled or surrendered without any resistance at both Trim and Dundalk. But Cromwell was not finished yet.

On October 2 he arrived at the fortified town of Wexford, and began to lay siege to it. Most of the defenders, having heard of the atrocities practiced in Drogheda, wanted to surrender, but the garrison commander, Colonel David Sinnot, also Governor of the town, played for time, stringing out the negotiations as he demanded such concessions as freedom of worship, amnesty for the town's defenders and protection for the fleet of privateers who were anchored there.

In Cromwell's defence, what happened next does not seem to be attributable to him. While still negotiating the town's surrender he witnessed his troops storm the walls, when Captain Stafford, in charge of the defence of Wexford Castle, surrendered the fort and all hell broke loose. As the English swarmed over the walls, the defenders panicked and ran. Pursued by the victorious New Model Army, they were slaughtered indiscriminately, despite a surviving letter from Cromwell to Sinnot which promised safe passage for his people. Sinnot himself was captured and hanged. Once again, civilians were murdered along with soldiers, and clergy were specifically targeted. The port was burned, making the harbour unusable, causing problems for the English. However, while we can't blame Cromwell for this particular massacre, let it also be noted that afterwards he took no action against his commanders for acting (apparently) without or against his orders, and even justified the killing by once again invoking the memory of 1641 when he said "They were made with their blood to answer for the cruelties they had exercised upon diverse poor Protestants".

Cromwell's next target was the nearby town of Waterford. Oddly enough, given that Protestants had been forcibly expelled from here, and that the Catholic synod of Bishops which threatened excommunication to any Catholic who supported the Irish Confederacy was based here, no massacre occurred. The town was besieged, but it took two attempts over a period of almost a year, combined with the effects of hunger and a rampant plague thought to be a resurgence of the Black Death to accomplish the defeat of the town. Its commander, soldiers and civilians were all allowed to leave without any harm coming to them, and perhaps this might have been Cromwell deciding enough blood had been shed, and that his continued rampage through town after Irish town might, rather than instil fear and surrender in the Irish, raise hackles and give cause for more strenuous resistance.

He went on to take the former Irish Confederate capital of Kilkenny, as well as Clonmel. Both towns held out but eventually surrendered, and again were treated honourably. A mutiny in Cork by their former allies ended resistance in Munster, and with the death of Owen Rua O'Neill Ulster quickly fell too, leaving only the west coast of Ireland holding out. Both the cities of Limerick and Galway proved hard, even impossible to take, but hunger and disease accomplished what force of arms could not, and the cities both fell in 1651. Cromwell had left Ireland the year before to fight the third English Civil War, secure in the knowledge that he had achieved what nobody before him had, and subdued Ireland entirely, from north to south and east to west, to the English, well, not Crown, not now, but to English rule.

Life under Cromwell

Back home and in his role as Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland, Cromwell was not slow to punish his defeated enemy. He passed the Act of Settlement in 1652, which prohibited Catholics from being members of the Irish parliament. Anyone who had taken part in the 1641 Rebellion was executed, and Catholics were banned from living in towns. Priests and clergy were hunted throughout the country, executed when captured. Land was confiscated from all Catholic landowners and given to the creditors who had financed Cromwell's campaign. Many of the former owners of these lands were forcibly removed to less arable lands in Connaught and Clare, those that remained were to serve their English masters. A combination of famine, the Black Death and a scorched-earth policy by English commanders had reduced Ireland to almost a wasteland, where scratching a miserable living was about all any Irish person could expect, and many of the soldiers left to fight in France and Spain.

What Cromwell did accomplish through his policies was the near-eradication of the Catholic Church in Ireland (though it would of course return, far stronger and unable to be again toppled after his death) and the elimination of the Catholic landowner class. Over time, history would come to refer to the new landowning Protestant class in Ireland as the Protestant Ascendancy, though their holdings would eventually shrink, to be confined to Ulster and what is today known as Northern Ireland. He more or less successfully abolished the popular use of the Irish language, ensuring only English was spoken, as it is today in all but the most remote and rural parts of Ireland. Ulster, which had resisted the influence of towns and villages brought to Ireland by the Normans, became urbanised, as did the rest of Ireland, and her resources - mostly wood from the many forests and peat from the even more numerous bogs - were plundered, changing the entire landscape of the island.

Cromwell died in 1658, a mere six years left to him to enjoy his success in taming Ireland. He was succeeded as Lord Protector by his son Richard, but his tenure did not last and it wasn't long after that before the exiled son of the king, Charles II, was invited back to England to take his rightful place on the throne, and the monarchy was restored.

But if the Irish thought their troubles were over with Cromwell's death, well, perhaps they had consumed one Guinness too many...

[Trollheart]

Chapter VIII: Under the English Heel, Part II: The Return of the King

Timeline: 1650 - 1691

England was never a country built to be a republic. It may have worked for France, and it may have worked for the United States, but England had been ruled by monarchs from its earliest days, and though the execution of Charles I and the ascension of Oliver Cromwell shook English society and politics to its roots, in the grand scheme of things it was more a small tremor than the earthquake it could have been. Unlike the French Revolution a century later, where the deposing of the King and all the noble classes led to a true republic (though first to The Terror) which never went back to a monarchy, England was a land of kings and queens, and Cromwell's attempt to turn it into a republic was really nothing more than a blip on history. Even now, four hundred years after his rule, and when it certainly has little or no need of one, England - Britain, indeed - stubbornly persists in perpetuating an outdated and completely unnecessary monarchy.

It's probably true to say England will never be free of the Crown.

Which is why it was no great surprise to find that soon after Cromwell's passing and with the ineffectual attempts of his son to govern, England was soon welcoming a king back onto the throne.

Charles II: Back in the Saddle

Charles II (1630 - 1685)

No stranger to the battlefield, Charles II had fought with his ill-fated father at the Battle of Edgehill during the English Civil War, and had been made commander of the English forces in the West Country by 1645, at the tender age of fifteen. However the war was not going in his father's favour, and in 1646 Charles fled to join his mother in exile in France, later moving to Holland where he tried to aid his father against Cromwell but was unable to prevent the king's death and the abolition of the monarchy. Enraged at Cromwell, and loyal to the Crown, Scotland proclaimed the king's son as monarch of Scotland, but he was not allowed travel there unless he gave an undertaking to impose the Scottish Presbyterianism religion upon the kingdom of Britain, which he refused to do. After his attempts to invade Scotland and force them to accept him as king on his terms failed miserably though, he had no choice and so agreed in 1650, arriving in Scotland and riding to take England back.

In this he again failed miserably, Cromwell's forces beating his armies back and necessitating his going on the run to avoid capture, literally hiding in a tree (now called the Royal Oak) in Shropshire until he could be smuggled back to France in defeat. It would therefore not be by force of arms or in military victory that Charles would return to England, but rather at the invitation of the English Parliament, frustrated with the incompetent and inexperienced son of Oliver Cromwell. The grand experiment was over; Charles was asked to retake his place on the throne of England, the republic was abolished and the monarchy restored.

But what did all this mean for Ireland?

Like much of Ireland's troubles, Charles' return and the Restoration, as it became known, can be summed up in one word: Catholicism. Despite his assurances to the Scots that he would promote and disseminate their religion, it was Anglican Protestantism that was made the sanctioned, and indeed compulsory, faith in the new England. With the outbreak of the Great Fire of London in 1666, things began to turn bad for Catholics.

Great Balls of Fire! London's Burning! (September 2 - 6, 1666)


A fire broke out in Thomas Farriner's bakery on Pudding Lane in the early hours of September 2 1666. The family managed to escape the blaze but by then the fire was spreading, and delays in obtaining the permission of the Lord Mayor of London to demolish the adjacent buildings to stop the growth of the fire meant that by the time he had arrived it was already too late. Most of London's buildings were of wood at that time, and easily caught fire, aided by the dry spell the city had been experiencing that month. Add in the overcrowding, the use of thatch for roofs, towering, crumbling tenement buildings that often reached six or seven stories and warehouses filled with tar, pitch and other combustibles, to say nothing of the stocks of gunpowder left over from the Civil War, and the City was quite literally a powder keg just waiting for a spark.

And when that spark was lit, the entire thing went up with frightening speed.

There being no fire brigade to speak of, the blaze had to be tackled by local people, the militia and the Watch, none of whom had any real professional training in fire-fighting, and the narrow, crowded streets, further congested by the panicked populace trying to get away from the fire, complicated matters as well. Essentially, the efforts to combat the fire turned more into attempts to escape or outrun it than to extinguish it, leaving the flames to hungrily devour the city unchecked, ranging further and further, and razing the city to the ground. In the aftermath, Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth, a man universally deemed unequal to his role and completely useless, was blamed for the fire's development, refusing in the early stages of the fire to allow houses be pulled down as their owners could not be located, and growling of the fire that "a woman could piss it out."

By sunrise on Sunday September 2 over 300 houses had been burned down and the fire had reached London Bridge, aided by a high wind. By mid-morning efforts to combat the fire had been abandoned, and everyone was running to escape it as the city burned. Charles himself intervened to have houses and buildings pulled down, after Bloodworth had made a half-hearted attempt at it, fainted and gone home to bed, leaving the city to the fire. But even demolition of buildings was insufficient to prevent the fire spreading, and it roared hungrily across the city, reaching the business district by Monday, devouring the Royal Exchange, the houses of bankers and exclusive shopping precincts.

Imagine the terror of a fire that raged on unchecked for four days! No emergency services to call, no way to put it out, and nothing to do but watch and wait, prepare and hope it didn't get to your part of town, being ready to do what everyone else was, what everyone else had no option to, but flee as the flames advanced and claimed more of London. Those who could escaped via the boats on the river, those who couldn't were hemmed in by the ancient Roman wall, which made a firetrap of the city. The king put his brother, James, Duke of York, in charge of combatting the fire - the Lord Mayor had fled the city - and he had some success, but he was fighting a losing battle. The fire raged on through Monday, and far from showing any signs of abating, was strengthening by the next day.

To the horror of all watching, the venerated Cathedral of St. Paul's, surrounded by wooden scaffolding as it was in the midst of restoration work, went up like a torch and was completely gutted on Tuesday. As the flames headed for the Tower of London, with its gigantic store of gunpowder, the army took matters into their own hands and blew up buildings to halt the advance of the fire. The wind dropped near the end of the day, and with it the fire, which began to gutter out. In the end, over 13,500 houses as well as major buildings like the Royal Exchange, St. Paul's Cathedral and The Custom House had been destroyed, the damage originally estimated at one hundred million pounds, later revised down to ten million.

In the immediate aftermath of the Great Fire (and even during it) speculation ran rife as to who might be responsible for such a tragedy, popular opinion excluding the possibility that this could have been, as it was, a tragic accident. Nebulous accusations against "foreigners" led to Dutch, French or any other non-English people in London running the risk of being lynched by mobs, and the army spent a good deal of its time rescuing innocent travellers from the hands of the angry crowds. And of course, as was ever the case in Protestant England, much of the blame fell, without a shred of evidence, upon the shoulders of the hated Catholics. The famous Gunpowder Plot had been, after all, only sixty years ago and was still fresh in the minds of most English people: the attempt to blow up parliament and assassinate the king (James I) and all of his ministers fuelled the hatred and widened the division between Catholics and Protestants.

Having dealt already with the Great Plague the year before, Charles was in no mood to fuck around with the Irish, and having a scapegoat to hand was useful for him, to divert attention from the fact that the streets which had been built during his father's day, and his father's, and so on, had been directly responsible for the spread of the fire. A monument to the Great Fire bore the inscription "Popish frenzy which wrought such horrors is not yet quenched."

[Trollheart]

When the Lie Becomes the Truth: The Popish Plot (1678 - 1681)

Although Charles II had been welcomed back after the rigours of life under The Lord Protector, his marriage to the Catholic Catherine of Portugal, his alliance with the old enemy France against Protestant Holland, and the embracing of his brother and heir James, Duke of York, of Catholicism, all led to there being much suspicion as to where the king's loyalties lay, in terms of religion. His lenient attitude towards and treatment of Catholics had not gone down well with his people, and they worried that on his death they could be left with a Catholic King.

Sometimes, into such a cauldron of worry and paranoia the tiniest match has to be dropped to set the whole thing off, and two men who had many reasons to hate Catholics, one of which was believed to be actually insane, somehow gained the trust of the authorities, whipped up the public into a frenzy, and engineered the execution of innocent men, including priests, and one man who would later be canonised by the Church.

And it was all a lie.



Titus Oates (1649 - 1705)
One of the two instigators of the plot, Oates was an English priest, and a poor one. A terrible scholar, he only managed to be ordained due to a false claim to have a degree (oddly enough, its production was never demanded and its existence seems to have been taken on trust by the Bishop of London, who ordained him) and later got into trouble while serving aboard a naval ship and being accused of "buggery" in Tangiers. Only his status as a priest saved him, but he was dismissed from the Navy. Prior to this incident, he had, while serving as curate in All Saint's, Hastings,  accused a teacher of sodomy with one of his pupils, completely baselessly, in order to take his job, and when the allegations proved groundless was himself accused of perjury.

Having been ordained into the Church of England in 1670 Oates, after some misadventures and after making some powerful enemies, switched his allegiances and became a Catholic priest seven years later. He met and cultivated the friendship of Israel Tonge, and together they authored anti-Catholic pamphlets, Oates later confiding to Tonge that he had only pretended to convert in order to get close to Catholics and learn their secrets. Between them they concocted the Popish Plot in 1678.

Israel Tonge (1621 - 1680)

A Doctor of Theology, Tonge blamed Catholic Jesuits for the burning down of his church during the Great Fire of London, He became even more anti-Catholic, writing tracts and essays denouncing them, and fabricating wild conspiracy theories about Rome's lust for power and the danger of the Pope. Another rabidly anti-Catholic doctor, Richard Barker, sponsored him (and later, Oates), providing him with food, lodgings and money, and securing for him a position as rector in the parish of Avon Dasset, in Warwickshire, a post Tonge did not however accept.

Together these two men would create a conspiracy to rival the best of Qanon or any in Trump's time. Completely fabricated, with no evidence or provenance whatever, it would still be accepted as legitimate and lead to the further persecution and death of many blameless Catholics.

Writing the manuscript himself, Oates laid out a plot by the Pope to have the king assassinated, naming Jesuit priests who were to carry out the attempt, about a hundred in all. He then slipped the note into the house of Richard Barker, where his friend Tonge was living. Tonge then "discovered" the writing, passed it on to his friend Christopher Kirkby, who became alarmed and informed the king. Charles was sceptical, but agreed to see Tonge and Oates, then passing the matter on to his Treasurer, Thomas Osborne, Lord Danby. Danby seemed convinced, but the king brushed the whole thing off, believing Oates a liar. The Duke of York, however, fearful for his brother's life and knowing (though he was himself a Catholic) how vehemently opposed to the Church of England English Catholics were, ordered an investigation into the threat.

Though Charles was still reluctant and did not believe a word of it, he probably worried that ignoring the threat might make him look overly sympathetic to Catholics, further cementing in the minds of his subjects his untrustworthiness, and recalling to their memory the fact that he was married to a Catholic princess. Therefore, he agreed to the investigation, and as it gathered steam and people were arrested on various spurious charges, Oates was given a complement of soldiers and allowed to begin rounding up Jesuits. The murder of a prominent anti-Catholic minister in suspicious circumstances set things in proper motion.

Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, to whom Oates had made his first depositions about the alleged plot, was found murdered with his own sword. The slaying was never solved, and laid at the feet of unnamed Catholics. As a result, and with the supposedly genuine threat of an attempt on the king's life by these heathens, Charles was prevailed upon to exile all Catholics to within twenty miles of London. Parliament issued the declaration that  "This House is of opinion that there hath been and still is a damnable and hellish plot contrived and carried out by the popish recusants for assigning and murdering the King." Things began to move fast.

Oates seized upon his success and accused five Catholic lords: (William Herbert, 1st Marquess of Powis, William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford, Henry Arundell, 3rd Baron Arundell of Wardour, William Petre, 4th Baron Petre and John Belasyse, 1st Baron Belasyse) and while the king scornfully maintained that at least one of them was so afflicted with gout that he could barely stand, and was unlikely to be plotting anything, the Earl of Shaftesbury had them all arrested and taken to the Tower. Shortly afterwards he demanded that the king's brother, James, Duke of York, be excluded from succession to the throne, due to his Catholic allegiances. At the end of the year the second Test Act was passed, as anti-Catholic fervour swept through England, which forbade Catholics from sitting in either the House of Lords or the House of Commons, and so effectively banning them from holding any political office.

Two of the "Popish Lords"  would die - Stafford beheaded while Petre simply died in the Tower - but the remaining three would be acquitted. However Catholic hysteria had descended on England long before this and as would happen in the Salem witch trials ten years later, accusations flew, unproven allegations were taken as evidence, and Catholics were persecuted, exiled and murdered.

Oliver Plunkett (1625 - 1681)

Last of Oates' victims was a man who would go on to be canonised and therefore made a saint in the latter half of the twentieth century. Oliver Plunkett was Archbishop of Armagh, and Primate of All Ireland. The grandson of a Baron, he was well connected to powerful Irish families such as the Earls of Roscommon and the Lords of Louth. He travelled to Rome in 1647, his ambition to become a priest, but by the time he was ready to return Cromwell held sway over Ireland and it would have been death for him to set foot on his native land again, so he remained in Rome until 1670, when the Restoration returned Charles II to the throne and, for a time, a more tolerant attitude was observed by the Crown towards Catholics.

With the passing of the Test Act, however, his church was destroyed and he had to flee into hiding, refusing to be exiled. When the Archbishop of Dublin was arrested as part of Oates' crazy conspiracy, Plunkett was accused of plotting a French invasion of England. He was arrested but Lord Shaftesbury, knowing he would never be convicted in Ireland, sent him to be held in Newgate Prison, where, despite the first trial collapsing on the grounds of the witnesses against Plunkett also being on the run, wanted men, and total lack of any evidence to convict, the second trial found him guilty and he was sentenced to be executed.

Much again like the Witch Trials would, the fervour for killing Catholics began to die down after this. This could be partly ascribed to the - mistaken - belief that all those who had plotted against the king (according to Oates and Tonge) had been dealt with, and that the danger to his royal person, and the kingdom, was passed, and partly, too, to accusation after accusation being made, each madder and more far-fetched than the last. Oates remained as zealous as ever, trying to extend the conspiracy he had created into Yorkshire, but the English were by now tired of his unfounded allegations, and many believed that some of those who had been accused and executed were in fact good and innocent men. It began to look more and more like one man's evil quest for personal revenge, which was what it was, of course. As trials collapsed all over the place, and the king was finally able to step forward and pronounce the witch-hunt for what it was, Oates rather stupidly accused the king himself of plotting with Catholics, and was arrested and thrown into prison.

When Charles died and was succeeded by James, the new king - a Catholic, remember - had Oates tried for perjury, probably the best he could do. Found guilty, it was unfortunately impossible to sentence Oates to death for such a crime, so he was ordered to be whipped through the streets, pilloried every year and imprisoned for life. He was eventually released in 1689 when William of Orange became king, but by then everyone had forgotten about him and he faded out of history, from hero to zero.