History of Ireland (1536–1801)
The history of Ireland from 1536 to 1801 is marked by the complete occupation of Ireland by England to the unification of Great Britain and Ireland with the Act of Union 1801.
Reconquest and Rebellion (1536–1607)
Ireland in 1500 was marked by the unfinished Anglo-Norman invasion that began in the 12th century. Many resident Irish were expelled from various areas (especially in the east and south-east) and English workers and peasants were settled instead. But the sphere of influence of the English dwindled more and more and so it came about that in the lordships outside the Pale - an area around Dublin - the power of the (English) authority in Dublin was hardly noticed. Over time, power outside the Pale passed almost completely to the most important Anglo-Norman dynasty, the Fitzgeralds of Kildare, whose leader was the representative of the English crown in Ireland until 1531. However, the Fitzgeralds' loyalty to the Crown grew weaker (the Fitzgeralds had even invited troops from Burgundy to Dublin to attend the 1497 coronation of the impostor Lambert Simnel as King of England ). The last deciding factor came in 1536 when Silken Thomas Fitzgerald called for open rebellion against the English crown after his rivals, the Butlers of Ormonde , were appointed proxy for the English crown. After the rebellion was put down with the execution of Silken Thomas, Henry VIII decided to bring the Irish island completely back under English control so that it would not become the starting point of an enemy invasion of the British Isles (a concern that would persist for another 400 years should stay). Henry VIII was looking for a way to protect the Pale area and a "replacement" for the Fitzgeralds.
With the help of Thomas Cromwell , the king instituted the carrot-and-stick policy . It extended the protection offered by the English crown to the entire elite in Ireland (excluding ethnicity), demanded in return but compliance with the laws of the central government and the official surrender of the Irish Lords to the Crown, so by royal charter their To officially receive the title (and thus also to be able to participate in parliament). The key point of this reform was the conversion of the Lordship of Ireland into a kingdom through a statute of the Irish Parliament in 1541. This happened at the urging of Henry VIII, because he had originally been granted the title by the Pope and Henry VIII had been excommunicated by the Catholic Church , so that the title was no longer valid. Furthermore, with this step one wanted to bind the Gaelic (or Gaelic) upper classes more strongly to the crown. Practically all lords agreed to these new privileges - but carried on as before. The real power in Ireland was not with Parliament, but with the Lord Deputy of Ireland - the royal deputy in Ireland. Parliament only met when it was called by the Lord Deputy when he wanted to pass new laws or taxes. The so-called Irish Privy Council was on hand to advise the Lord Deputy .
Henry's church reforms - although not as severe as in England - caused unrest. His deputy in Ireland, Lord Deputy Anthony St Leger , bought the opposition using land that had previously been stolen from the monasteries.
After the death of Henry VIII in 1547, it became even more difficult for the Crown Deputies in Ireland to enforce the laws of the central government. Several rebellions broke out one after the other. The first was in Leinster in the 1550s when the O'Moore and O'Connor clans were about to be relocated as part of the Plantations . In the 1560s, the English attempt ended in an internal conflict between the O'Neill clan in a longstanding dispute between the Lord Deputy of Sussex and Shane O'Neill , the clan's leader. Other clans, such as the O'Brynes and O'Tooles, continued to raid the Pale area (as they always had) . Probably the most violent action took place in Munster in the 1560s to 1580s, when the Fitzgeralds of Desmond started the Desmond Rebellions to prevent British invasion of their territory. In addition to some extremely brutal battles, targeted famines were provoked in which almost a third of the province's population died. The rebellion was finally put down in 1583 when the Earl of Desmond was killed.
There were two reasons for the ongoing violence in Ireland and the problems the English government had there. First, the aggressiveness of the English soldiers and administrators - entire garrisons violated the law, killed local Irish leaders and lords, or confiscated and looted private property. The second problem was the incompatibility between Gaelic-Irish society and the English government. According to Irish custom, a clan leader was elected through a line of nobility (which not infrequently led to internal disputes). Under the settlement policy of Henry VIII, however, the succession should be carried out according to English custom, that is, that the first-born son took over the succession ( primogeniture ). By constantly disregarding this law, the English were forced to take sides in disputes, which in turn turned the losing parties against the English.
In 1559 Elizabeth I ascended the English throne and tried to pacify Ireland with a series of plans. The first attempt involved military force, in which armed areas (for example the Wicklow Mountains ) were occupied by a small number of English troops under commanders of the so-called Seneschals . The seneschals have the power to proclaim martial law , which allows executions without trial. The resident lord had to vouch for every person who lived under the control of a seneschal. The so-called “masterless men” (people without a guarantee from a lord) could be killed at any time. The English crown hoped that the Irish lords would put more pressure on their subordinates, but the arbitrary executions turned the Irish lords even more against the English.
This failure led the English to other long-term plans to pacify and Anglicize the Irish island. One of these plans was the so-called composition ; private armies were abolished and provinces were completely occupied by English troops under the command of a governor (called the Lords President ). In return, the most powerful lords were exempt from taxes. However, the enforcement of this plan led to even more violence, especially in Connacht , where the MacWilliam Burkes fought a fierce battle against the English provincial president Sir Richard Bingham . But in some areas this plan was successful, for example in Thomond , where it was supported by the ruling O'Brien dynasty.
The second plan of this type was the Plantations: areas in Ireland where English and Scottish immigrants were deliberately settled in order to bring English culture and loyalty to the Crown to the Irish island. The Plantations attempt had already been made in Laois and Offaly in the 1550s and in Antrim in the 1570s - both with little success. However, towards the end of the Desmond Rebellions (early 1580s) large areas of land in Munster were colonized. Most of this land was given to Sir Walter Raleigh , who later sold it to Sir Richard Boyle . Boyle became the Earl of Cork and the wealthiest man of the early Stuart monarchs. Of course, the expropriation of the land for the purpose of the Plantations fueled the Irish hatred of the English.
The critical point of the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland came when attempts were made to extend power to the territory of Ulster and the clan of Hugh O'Neill (the most powerful lord in Ireland at the time). O'Neill defended himself by force of arms and started the Nine Years War (1594-1603), which covered the whole island and had the aim of completely driving the English authority from the Irish island. O'Neill succeeded in setting up an army consisting of about 10,000 Irish. This force was well armed with numerous muskets which the Irish had bought in Scotland with Spanish gold. The Irish were supported by Spain not only through financial means, but also through the sending of fortress engineers. O'Neill not only relied on the Irish of Gaelic descent, but also tried to win over the "Old English" (English settlers from Anglo-Norman times who had remained Catholic) for his cause. Due to the prevailing poverty in Ireland, many Irish served as mercenaries in the Spanish army, where they gained important military experience. An English army sent to combat O'Neill's troops was surprisingly attacked by them at Clontibret and defeated. Three years later, on August 14, 1598, another battle broke out at Yellow Ford, which also ended in a severe English defeat.
Queen Elizabeth I installed Lord Mountjoy as the new Lord Deputy in Ireland in 1600. In the north of Ireland, he was responsible for the destruction of the harvest and had the herds of cattle confiscated there in order to deprive the rebels of their basic food sources. Mountjoy's further advance into Ulster, however, was stopped by O'Neill and his troops from October 2-3, 1600 at Moyry Pass. O'Neill received support on September 21, 1601 in the form of 3,500 Spanish soldiers who went ashore in Kinsale and were met by King Philip III. were sent. English troops under Mountjoy began the siege of the city a little later. At the end of December, O'Neill and his army arrived at Kinsale to end the siege by force. The attempt failed and the Spanish garrison capitulated. After a few more fighting, O'Neill negotiated an armistice with the English in 1603. Since Ireland was now completely under English control again, numerous members of the Irish nobility, including O'Neill, left their homeland in 1607, where one spoke of the " Flight of the Earls ". In retaliation for the uprising, numerous Irish landowners were expropriated.
A new order? (1607-1641)
In the early seventeenth century it appeared that Ireland should be peacefully integrated into English society. The first (and arguably most important) step after the victory was to disarm the Irish lordships and create a central government for the whole country. Irish culture, law and language were suppressed and many Irish lords lost their lands and titles.
A development with serious consequences up to the present day occurred under Elisabeth's successor, Jakob I. Under his reign, the "Ulster Plantation" was carried out from 1609 onwards. In the course of this plantation , around 80,000 English, Scottish and Welsh settlers were settled in Ulster. Ulster thereby developed into the core of English rule in Ireland. At the beginning of the 17th century there was an economic boom, which resulted in strong population growth. To secure their rule over Ireland, the English under James I built forts and citadels in cities like Cork and Kinsale. The Northern Irish city of Derry was transferred directly to the English capital London in 1613 , fortified and settled with English. Her name was changed to Londonderry . The courts ruled under English law and the statutes of the central Irish parliament. But the English failed to convince the Irish people to convert to the Protestant faith, and almost all Irish stuck to their previous traditions. It is still unclear why the conversion of the Irish to Protestantism failed. One theory (of many) lies in the brutal methods used by the English crown to try to pacify the country and exploit its resources. Another reason could have been the Counter-Reformation in Ireland - in 1600 there were already so-called Irish colleges - centers for the Irish Catholic clergy - in many (Catholic) countries in Europe .
The pre-Elizabethan Irish population is usually divided into two groups: the "Old Irish" (or Gael, that is, the original Irish settlers) and the "Old English" (descendants of the medieval Hiberno-Norman settlers). These two groups were historically opposed; for example, the Old English settled in the Pale, South Wexford, and other fortified towns, while the Old Irish settled the rest of the country. In the 17th century, these two population groups (especially at the elite level) converged. For example, most of the Old English lords spoke the Irish language and greatly promoted Irish poetry and music. Weddings between the two groups were also common. Towards the end of the Elizabethan conquest , both groups also shared the same Roman Catholic religion - in contrast to the Protestant occupying power. In the years between 1603 and 1641 (the outbreak of the rebellion) the Catholic population groups felt more and more oppressed by the English government in Ireland, which was mainly due to the very first Penal Laws - so-called penal laws, which were directed against non-Protestant population groups .
Most of the upper classes were in principle not hostile to the sovereignty of the English king in Ireland - but they wanted to keep the upper class in Irish society. However, this was prevented because of their deviant religion and the danger caused by the expansion of the plantations. The Protestant settlers dominated the Irish government and tried to expropriate more and more land by questioning its medieval title and as a sanction for violating the mandatory attendance of Protestant masses. In return, Irish Catholics turned directly to Kings James I and (from 1625) Charles I so that their religion would be fully recognized and tolerated. There have been a few instances where the monarchs appeared to have reached an agreement with the Irish but in return demanded higher taxes. Despite increased payments, the monarchs postponed equality further and further into the future due to domestic political pressure. Thomas Wentworth , who was appointed Lord Deputy in Ireland in 1632 , did nothing to calm the Irish population when he announced further expropriations. Over time, the English king came into conflict with Parliament, which was heavily influenced by the Puritan MPs. Puritanism was a belief movement that called for a religion free of any Catholic elements. When Charles I had Wentworth executed in 1641 under pressure from Parliament, the Catholic Irish feared that the Puritan parliamentarians would enforce reprisals against them.
Civil War and Confederate War
The Irish Rebellion of 1641 began as a coup d'état by the Catholic Irish nobility but quickly turned into a religious war between the Catholic Irish and the English and Scottish (Protestant) settlers. The conspirators were a small group of Irish landowners - mostly from the Ulster province, which is heavily populated by English and Scots. While Hugh MacMahon and Conor Maguire wanted to occupy Dublin Castle , Phelim O'Neill and Rory O'Moore were to conquer the city of Derry and other northern cities. The plan, which was to be carried out on October 23, 1641, was based more on surprise than on military strength. It was hoped for broad support from the population. But the plan of the most non-violent takeover of power failed when the authorities in Dublin learned of the plan from an informant - Owen O'Connolly, who had converted to Protestantism - and had Maguire and MacMahon arrested. O'Neill was able to take some forts in the meantime , claiming to be acting in the name of the king. But the situation got out of hand, as the authorities in Dublin suspected it was a general uprising by the Irish Catholic people who wanted to massacre British and Protestant settlers. Commanders such as Sir Charles Coote and William St. Leger (both Protestant settlers) were sent to bring the population back under control, which, however, led to attacks against Irish civilians.
In the meantime, the collapse of state authority in Ulster also led to attacks by Irish residents on English and Scottish settlers. Phelim O'Neill and the other insurgent leaders tried to prevent these attacks, but they did not get against the ethnically motivated rural population, who had been oppressed for decades. Over the next several months, this violence spread across the island. Many Irish lords who had lost land or feared expropriation joined the rebellion and helped in the attacks on Protestant settlers. The longer the rebellion lasted, the more violent the attacks became. Where at first there was only beating and robbery, houses later burned and in the end there was murder - especially in Ulster. The worst incident occurred in Portadown , where its Protestant residents were rounded up and massacred on the city's bridge.
The number of Protestants killed in these early months of the rebellion is controversial. Parliamentary pamphlets from this period speak of over 100,000 settlers believed to have lost their lives - but recent research strongly suggests that the actual number is much lower. It is believed that up to 12,000 Protestants were killed throughout the rebellion - most of whom died from the cold or from disease after being evicted from their homes in the middle of winter.
The bitterness these acts aroused ran deep - Protestants from Ulster still commemorated the anniversary of the rebellion two hundred years later (23.10). Images of these atrocities can still be found today on the banner of the Orange Order . Even today, many see the acts of that time as an example of genocide . Modern historians emphasize that the 1641 rebellion left an overwhelming psychological impact on Protestant settlers. While relations between Protestants and Catholics improved before the rebellion, trust between the two population groups was gone after the rebellion. On the contrary, many settlers retaliated just as violently on the Catholic Irish when given the opportunity. The events of the rebellion separated Ireland for the first time sustainably into two faith-dependent camps - a separation that can still be felt in Northern Ireland today.
Oliver Cromwell
With the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, no other English troops were available to take full control of the rebellion, and so the rebels ruled large parts of Ireland. The Catholic majority then founded the Confederation of Ireland (1642–1649) and ruled it during the subsequent wars of the three kingdoms in Britain and Ireland. The Confederate regime allied itself with Charles I and the English nobles - until 1649, however, there was no formal contract between them. Had the royalists won the English Civil War, an autonomous Catholic-Irish state would probably have been the result. But the royalists were beaten by the parliamentarians and Charles I was executed. This cleared the way for Oliver Cromwell , who recaptured Ireland from 1649 to 1653. This recapture by Cromwell was extremely brutal and marked by atrocities such as the massacre of the royalist garrison at the sieges of Drogheda in 1649. Worse still, was the scorched earth policy of suppressing Irish guerrillas, which sparked a nationwide famine. Numerous captured insurgents were shipped to the Caribbean as slaves , while a significant portion of the Gaelic landowners were expropriated. Since the English Republic had problems paying its troops, it offered its soldiers land in Ireland as compensation. In this way tens of thousands of parliamentary veterans settled in Ireland, mostly in Ulster. These were members of the New Model Army , the majority of whom were staunch Puritans. Many of the expropriated Irish found themselves forced to live their lives as outlaws .
As punishment for the 1641 rebellion, nearly all of the lands owned by Irish Catholics were expropriated and bequeathed to British settlers. The remaining Catholic landowners were by the Act for the Settlement of Ireland in 1652 after Connacht relocated - from that time the saying originates To hell or to Connacht ( in the Hell or Connacht ). In addition, Catholics were banned from the Irish Parliament, for example, from living in cities and from marrying Protestants - but not all of these rules were strictly enforced. At that time, up to a third of the Irish population (400,000 to 600,000 people) died.
restoration
With the Stuart Restoration in England, Ireland came to an uneasy peace. Charles II tried occasionally to appease Catholic Irish with land and compensation payments, for example through the Act of Settlement 1662 .
In 1678 the so-called Popish Plot caused a brief flare-up of anti-Catholic riots. The plot popish was one of the priest Titus Oates revealed supposed Catholic conspiracy to murder King Charles II. And establishing the Catholic brother James II. Then nonconformists supported the Anglican Whig Party, which won a large majority in the House and in 1679 the so-called " Exclusion Bill " passed to deny James the right to the throne. The bill eventually failed in the House of Lords, and it was revealed that Oates had invented the alleged conspiracy to discredit Catholics in England.
War of the two kings
But already a generation after the start of the Stuart Restoration, the Irish island became a renewed battlefield of war, when during the Glorious Revolution in 1689 the Catholic King James II was deposed by the English Parliament and replaced by William III. (William of Orange) was replaced. While the Irish Catholics supported James to repeal the pre-existing penal laws and land expropriations, the Protestant settlers fought to maintain English power in Ireland. Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconell , appointed by James II as his deputy in Ireland, formed a Jacobite army out of Catholic Irish and occupied all strategic points in Ireland with the exception of Derry, which was besieged directly by his men .
James, supported by the French King Louis XIV , landed on May 12, 1689 with French troops in Ireland near Kinsale - Wilhelm III. reached Ireland with a multinational army in the same year. The two kings fought for the English, Scottish and Irish throne in the War of the Two Kings ( Cogadh an Dá Rí ). Eventually the Jacobite army was defeated but was able to leave the country under the Treaty of Limerick in 1691. While the war was not as devastating as that of the 1640s and 1650s, it was a bitter defeat for the Irish landowners, who would never be able to regain their former position within Irish society.
The Penal Laws
The Protestants (who made up only an estimated 20-25% of the Irish population) rejected the relatively liberal Limerick Treaty as negligent leniency towards the “papist rebels” and sought to remedy its “failings” by law. As a result (especially from 1695 to 1709) a number of anti-Catholic laws were passed, which are known today as the Penal Laws ("Penal Laws"). With a few exceptions, these laws were directed against the Catholic Church and the Catholic upper class, but hardly affected the ordinary Catholic population.
The prelude to this disadvantage was the year 1691, when a law of the English parliament excluded Catholics from all public offices, parliament, universities and the military - in England and also in Ireland. The Penal Laws of the Irish Parliament began in 1695 when Catholics were banned from owning weapons and horses fit for war, Catholic schools in Ireland were closed, and parents were banned from having their children educated on the continent. In 1697, Catholics were largely excluded from the legal profession. In the same year bishops and religious clergy were expelled from the country and their entry prohibited. In 1704 the entry of secular clergymen was forbidden, those already in the country had to register. From 1697, Catholics could not take over Protestant land through marriage, inheritance or guardianship; from 1704 they were also prohibited from any purchase or long-term lease. In addition, they were no longer allowed to bequeath their goods to one son in full, but had to divide them up among all sons, whereby the property should be dismembered. However, if the eldest son transferred to the Anglican Church, he inherited the entire property undivided, and even more: if he converted during the father's lifetime, he received the property immediately and the father was demoted to the tenant for life. One of the few penal laws enacted after 1709 was the disenfranchisement in 1728.
It should be noted, however, that there was a major difference between the text of the Penal Laws and their implementation. As for the Church, for example, the combination of expulsion of bishops (ordination to priests!) And entry ban for clergy should have resulted in the extinction of the Catholic hierarchy within a generation. In reality, however, the picture was completely opposite. Apart from sporadic application, especially in the first two decades of the 18th century, the laws degenerated more and more into a silent threat, which certainly did not go completely without effect, but in no way prevented the church from consolidating itself surprisingly quickly.
The laws against landowners have been in use for longer, which has resulted in the Catholic landowning class being considered almost extinct (5%) by the 18th century. However, there is some evidence that here too the effects of the laws were a lot smaller than one could and previously assumed. Catholic landowners evidently demonstrated an astonishing skill in cushioning some of the measures through semi-legal and illegal means (such as conducting business through Protestant straw men). It is true that one must warn against playing down the hindering and humiliating measures against the Catholic upper class too much; economic reality, however, was far removed from the black-and-white, picturesque image of a dichotomy in Irish society into exploitative Protestant landowners on the one hand and oppressed Catholic peasants on the other.
Numerous penal laws were actually repealed towards the end of the century, in the context of the American War of Independence and the French Revolution, but individual disadvantages persisted into the 19th century.
Grattan's Parliament and the Irish Volunteers
In the late 18th century, much of the Protestant elite considered Ireland their home country. A parliamentary group under Henry Grattan sought to improve trade relations with Great Britain and, above all, to remove the punitive tariffs imposed on Irish products in Great Britain. From the early 18th century parliamentarians also fought for legislative independence of the Irish Parliament, most notably the repeal of the so-called Poynings' Law , which allowed the British Parliament to exercise legislative power in Ireland. Many of the demands were met in 1782 when free trade between Britain and Ireland was introduced and Poynings' Law was abolished.
The Irish volunteers of the 18th century (not to be confused with the Irish volunteers of the 20th century) are considered the instrument for creating the reforms . The Volunteers were formed in Belfast in 1778 to protect Ireland against enemy invasion when the majority of the regular British soldiers were withdrawn from Ireland in the wake of the American Revolutionary War . However, the volunteers were never subordinate to the government, and although initially loyal to the British Crown, they were quickly infiltrated by political radicals. As early as 1779, the Volunteers under Lord Charlemont had over 100,000 members.
United Irishmen, Rebellion and Act of Union
But reforms related to Catholic emancipation stalled, and some radicals in Ireland looked to the military example of a revolution in France. In 1791 a small group of radical Presbyterians formed the Society of the United Irishmen . The original goal was an end to religious discrimination and the fight for the right to vote. The United Irishmen were soon to be found across the country - republicanism was very topical at the time, especially in the Presbyterian communities in Ulster, who were also discriminated against because of their religion and who had close ties to so-called Scottish-Irish Americans ( Scots- Irish American ) who fought against Britain during the American independence movement . Many oppressed Catholics, especially in the middle classes, also identified with this idea.
In 1793 the government in London attempted to stop the radical republican movement in Ireland by repealing many penal laws , and in 1795 the government supported the building of the Catholic University in Maynooth . However, none of these measures could calm the situation in Ireland, as the ultra-loyalist Protestants were also dissatisfied that the oppression of other faiths was being eased. This led to the establishment of the Orange Order in the same year .
The United Irishmen, now plotting an armed revolution, forged ties with the militant Catholic group Defenders , while Wolfe Tone traveled to France to (successfully) seek military support. In December 1796 a French army, 15,000 strong, reached Bantry Bay . However, the landing failed due to indecision, poor seamanship and a permanent storm.
In the meantime, the government tried to stop the United Irishmen by more radical means such as torture, executions and transfer to prison camps. As the government's opposition increased, the United Irishmen began the revolt without French help. The first skirmishes of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 took place on May 24, 1798. When the central point of the plan - the takeover of Dublin - failed, the rebellion spread, seemingly haphazardly, to the rest of the country; first around Dublin, then in counties Kildare, Meath, Carlow and Wicklow. The longest fighting has been in County Wexford. A small group of French soldiers landed in Killala Bay, County Mayo ; this also led to the outbreak of rebellion in Counties Leitrim and Longford. Although the rebellion was put down after only three months, it cost approximately 30,000 lives.
The goal of the rebellion, a society independent of faith, was not achieved - on the contrary: atrocities against people of different faiths (on both sides) made the goal a long way off. Government troops and the militia killed Catholics indiscriminately, and the rebels also killed uninvolved loyalist Protestant civilians in various attacks.
Partly in response to the rebellion, the independent Irish government was completely abolished on January 1, 1801 with the Act of Union and Ireland was annexed to the Kingdom of Great Britain , which was henceforth called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . The Irish Parliament, dominated by Anglican landowners, was forced to vote for its own dissolution. The Catholic bishops , who opposed the rebellion, supported the union with Great Britain so as not to harm its goal of Catholic emancipation.
See also
literature
- Maureen Wall: The Age of the Penal Laws (1691-1778) . In: Theodore W. Moody, Francis Xavier Martin (eds.): The course of Irish history . Mercier Press, Cork, 17th ed. 1987, ISBN 0-85342-715-1 , pp. 217-231.