Background
The late medieval/early modern period marked a fundamental turning point in Anglo-Irish relations. Before this, English control of Ireland had remained a largely nominal affair; however, the Tudors became increasingly concerned about the threat that Ireland posed to English security. Following a rebellion in 1534, Henry VIII declared himself King of Ireland, signaling the beginning of a much more aggressive English colonial posture. The plantation of Ireland must be understood not only as a potential threat, which successive monarchs regarded Ireland to be, but also as a theological revolution which would redefine Europe’s religious landscape and radicalize relationships between the two islands. The fact that Ireland remained Catholic while Britain turned towards varying degrees of Protestantism introduced a new and complex dimension into Anglo-Irish relations, which would provide the basis for mutual distrust and suspicion.
The 16th-17th Century Plantation of Ireland
During the 16th and 17th Century, the English Monarchy and Parliament attained effective dominion over the island of Ireland through a series of confiscations of Irish Catholic-owned land, and the subsequent colonization of this land by settlers from England and Scotland. These ‘plantations’ were to cause extreme demographic and political changes, led at least in part to the irreparable decline of the Irish language, and effectively amounted to a policy of genocide against the Irish Catholic population.
The Midlands Plantation
The first major plantation scheme occurred in the midlands from 1556. It was initiated by Mary I in the areas corresponding to the modern counties of Laois and Offaly, known as Queen's and King's counties respectively before partition. The aim of the the scheme was to protect 'the Pale,' the area around Dublin that was the main center of English authority in Ireland, by establishing two large settlements at Maryborough (modern-day Port Laois) and Philipstown (Daingean). In this, the scheme was partly successful, however the new settlements became the focus for attacks by native chiefs and as a consequence became quasi-military settlements requiring support from the English exchequer rather than the planned self-financing civilian colonies.
Despite the fact that Mary was a Catholic, much of the settlement was largely Protestant. There were also strong ethnic aspects to the scheme as land confiscated from natives was to be settled by 'Englishmen born in England or Ireland' thus religious and ethno-national identities in Ireland were beginning to fuse into two antagonistic identities. |
The Munster Plantation
An unsuccessful rebellion by the Catholic Earl of Desmond in 1585 led to his lands across the province of Munster being confiscated. War and famine had led to these areas being under-populated, and settlers, mainly from the west of England, were brought in to re-populate the area. As the map above shows, the lands confiscated were piecemeal across Munster. The process of colonizing these areas was also painfully slow such that by 1598 only around 12,000 people had settled. To confuse the pattern further, many displaced former residents reclaimed their land either legally or by squatting. A rebellion in that year hit the plantations hard but after this they recovered and by 1641 the settler population was estimated to be around 22,000. The significance of the Munster plantation is that it left a large Protestant minority in south and west Cork. In other parts of Munster its legacy is harder to discern probably because of the degree of mixing and inter-marriage that occurred.
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The Ulster Plantation
Ulster had long been the most volatile and under-developed of Ireland's provinces. It also had well established ties across the North Channel to Catholic clans in Scotland which presented a strategic threat to England. The scheme to plant Ulster focused on the counties west of Lough Neagh and the River Bann in an attempt to break up the old centers of Gaelic influence in these areas. The plan was to give much of the land to English or Scottish 'undertakers,' who would settle their land with Protestant, and to 'servitors,' native Catholics who had shown loyalty to the crown during the Nine Years War. The plans for the county of Coleraine were different in that responsibility was passed to the guilds of the City of London leading to the county being renamed Londonderry. Antrim and Down were excluded as they had already been the subject of successful private plantation schemes.
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Cromwellian Plantation: The Crucial Turning Point
The process of plantation was completed with the Cromwellian plantation of 1652, which was conducted largely as a result of the Irish support for King Charles I in the English Civil War, and the related Irish Confederate Wars, which were a concerted effort by an Irish Catholic government to reverse the plantation system. In revenge for this, Oliver Cromwell led an army of 12,000 men (mostly hardened veterans of the Civil War) in August 1649 to Dublin. This force immediately marched north towards the walled town of Drogheda, which was besieged, sacked and pillaged with the loss of around 1,000 Irish troops and as many as 3,000 civilians--many of the survivors being sold into slavery.
A week after this, the Cromwellian forces similarly sacked the town of Wexford in a deliberate act of terror against the Irish Catholic population. Over the course of the next few years, his forces attacked and defeated Catholic armies and garrisons in several different towns and cities throughout the country, ultimately ending the Confederate Wars.
Following the pacification of the Irish and Royalist forces, Cromwell enforced a series of penal laws against Irish Catholics, which included banning Catholics from holding office in the Irish Parliament and which expelled Catholic clergy from the country and made the practice of Catholic Mass illegal. Additionally, Catholics were forbidden from living in towns. Most importantly, major land confiscations were undertaken. Any Catholic landowner who had participated in the Confederate Wars were stripped of their lands and deported to the West Indies as slaves --about 40,000 people in total; other Catholic landowners also had their properties seized, although they were allowed to receive lands in the western-most province of the country, which were often much poorer than the lands they had given up in compensation. This was primarily done to control the Catholic landlords, by pinning them between the Atlantic Ocean and the River Shannon. Shortly after this, the percentage of Catholic landowners in the country had dropped from roughly 60% of the population to merely 8%. In addition, it has been estimated that as much as a third of the Irish Catholic population of the time was killed or deported.