The English

Their plan was frustrated by the combined impact of Protestant reform and English expansionism. When Henry VIII overthrew Kildare and set up a system of direct rule in 1534, he was not doing the bidding of the Palesmen; he was making sure that Ireland could be effectively defended against European retaliation for the divorce of his Spanish wife. And when he accepted the kingship of Ireland from the Irish parliament in 1541 he did so because he needed to rebut the argument that since the lordship of Ireland had been formally approved by the papacy, his authority there was at the pope's discretion.

The slow completion of the conquest of Ireland that Henry thus more or less inadvertently initiated was a confused process. From the outset, there were alternative possibilities. The country might be brought under control through the anglicisation of its people, as the Palesmen urged and the government itself accepted in principle, but that was a protracted and uncertain way. Alternatively, it might be conquered outright and control assured by the impor tation of new English colonists, but that was costly and difficult. These competing policies were favoured by rival interest groups. The 'English of Irish birth', as they were clumsily called, were sure that the conciliation of the Irish was most conducive to the welfare and safety of their descendents. The 'English of English birth' were either short-stay officials, unconcerned with the long run, or adventurers who had nothing to gain from the conversion of the status quo into a quiescent community under the Crown.

The competition was an unequal one for two reasons. First, the Crown's policy in Ireland was ultimately governed by international pressure rather than by local conditions, and force always superseded conciliation in times of foreign crisis when defence became the overriding priority. Secondly, the 'English of Irish birth' were still 'a middle nation', distrusted and resented by newcomers from England. As early as the 1550s, a Protestant reformer struck a new and prophetic note when, having referred in conventional terms to the natives as the 'wild Irish', he went on to speak of newcomers like himself as 'people of our nation', and to dismiss the colonial community as 'the tame Irish'.

Those who followed him to Ireland were envious of the entrenched position of the colonists and found credible grounds for disparaging them in their failure to follow England in embracing the Protestant religion. That disparagement met with an understanding response in England itself, where the interest in Ireland was largely strategic. In a Europe now divided by religion, the first line of English defence was effective control over Ireland. It was obvious both that control must be in Protestant hands and that the more Protestant Ireland became the more secure it would be. Again, there were alternative possibilities; the Irish could be converted to Protestantism, or authentic English Protestants could be brought to Ireland to transform it. And again, the first of these possibilities was slow and uncertain. So migration was encouraged, the expropriation of Irish land was facilitated and, as opportunity offered, the systematic colonisation of selected areas - the process that contemporaries called 'plantation' - was undertaken.

The elaboration of plantation schemes brought a series of rapid decisions about the status of the historic colonists. In the first, in the midland counties of Leix and Offaly in the 1550s, arrangements were made to screen applications for land grants from local settlers, so that those of doubtful loyalty or insufficient Englishness could be excluded. By this stage, the government was making working distinctions between 'the queen's loyal subjects' in the heartland and the towns and 'the queen's English rebels' in the outlying rural areas. In the second major scheme, in Munster in the 1580s, only those born in England were eligible. In a single generation, in short, the Palesmen had been downgraded. In the 1540s, they had been partners of the Crown in a new experiment in Irish government: in the 1580s, they were judged unfit for trust.

Beyond the Pale, developments were more extreme. As the government gradually asserted its authority over the outlying areas, it paid particular attention to the degenerate colonists vhose reclamation to civility and obedience became a special priority. The Irish could scarcely be held responsible for their barbarism; the settlers had embraced it by choice. And they were lot only the more culpable, but the more vulnerable. Nominally, they held their lands from the Crown and had no recourse if the Crown should take them back to bestow upon more deserving subjects, as it showed every sign of intending to do. Obstinately, they resisted the extension of crown control, to the point of resorting to arms in Munster. It was the lands of the Geraldine earl of Desmond and his settler followers that were confiscated for plantation in the 1580s, not the lands of the native Irish. The old, unsatisfactory colony was to be replaced by a new one.

The final crisis of the 1590s, when the government, against a background of international conflict, completed the conquest by subduing Ulster, brought divided responses. The ancestral loyalties of the Palesmen held firm; they fought with the government, seizing the chance to show that their Catholicism did not in any way diminish their allegiance to the Crown. Elsewhere, as ever, the settlers acted as their local interests dictated; some fought for the crown, and some against it; some did both, and others, particularly in the towns, tried to maintain a safe and profitable neutrality.

Thus it was that when the war ended in English victory the problems posed by the historic colony remained unresolved. The government interpreted its success as a Protestant triumph and moved quickly to enforce religious discrimination. The Palesmen resisted, strenuously affirming that their Englishness and their record of loyalty placed them among the conquerors, not among the conquered.

The colonial communities elsewhere hastily rediscovered their historic identity, resurrected their historic surnames where necessary, and allied themselves with the Pale against government policy, insisting that their Catholicism was perfectly compatible with loyalty and that they were entitled to be treated as Englishmen. For the first time, the colonial communities united, with the degenerate colonists shedding their own past and claiming to share the political and cultural traditions of the Palesmen. Collectively, they adopted the name 'Old English', to stress both their origins and their prior rights against the recent Protestant settlers, whom they called the 'New English'. These Old English made up a formidable interest. Between them, they owned more than a third of Irish land, and a much higher proportion of the best land; and they largely controlled Irish trade. The government was uncertain how to deal with them. It was unwilling to trust them, but unable to suppress them, and it soon realised that what the situation required was more New English to balance the Old English.

Click here for part 5, or here for part 3.
click here to go to the start of the article.

From the Appletree Press title: The People of Ireland (currently out of print).
Also see A Little History of Ireland.