As the King looked on the verge of agreeing to a more radical Protestant policy, the Catholic Irish felt ever more afraid. A Presbyterian settlement could only mean further religious discrimination and loss of land for the old Catholic families. The Gaelic chieftans had seen the success enjoyed by the Covenanters in Scotland and decided that rebellion was the only language Charles understood.
But what began, like the National Covenant, as a controlled uprising against the English administration in Dublin was quickly over taken by long-term resentment.
In October , the Gaelic clans of Dungannon, Charlemont and Newry rose against the Protestant settlers who occupied their ancient estates. The rebellion fanned out across the island in an uncontrolled and savage fashion. We invite you to discuss this subject, but remember this is a public forum. Please be polite, and avoid your passions turning into contempt for others. We may delete posts that are rude or aggressive, or edit posts containing contact details or links to other websites.
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Free Learning from The Open University. Featured content. Free courses. All content. Lecky rightly says, these 'isolated episodes, by diverting the mind from the broad features of the war, serve rather to diminish than to enhance its atrocity. The suppression of the native race in the wars against Shane O'Neil , Desmond, and Tyrone, was carried on with a ferocity which surpassed that of Alva in the Netherlands, and has seldom been exceeded in the pages of history. The slaughter of Irishmen was looked upon as literally the slaughter of wild beasts.
Not only the men, but even the women and children who fell into the hands of the English were deliberately and systematically butchered. The sword was not found efficient. But another method was found much more efficacious. Year after year, over a great part of all Ireland, all means of human subsistence was destroyed, no quarter was given to prisoners who surrendered, and the whole population was skilfully and steadily starved to death.
The pictures of the condition of Ireland at this time are as terrible as anything in human history. The Government [continues Mr. Lecky] believed that the one effectual policy for making Ireland useful to England was, in the words of Sir John Davies, to root out the Irish from the soil, to confiscate the property of the septs, and to plant the country systematically with English tenants. The plantation of Ulster came between and The Irish chiefs were dispossessed, and English and Scotch adventurers poured in to take their place.
The native population was driven from the rich lands to the poor, and English and Scotch tenants were imported instead. Six counties were declared to be forfeited to the Crown, under an artificial treason law which had no hold on the Irish conscience.
English and Scotch colonists were brought in to occupy the richest parts of the soil. The children of the land were thrust forth to find what sustenance they could on the leavings of the intruders, and were debarred even the poor privilege of serving the new settlers for hire, lest they should be tempted to fall upon their masters unawares.
Everything which had been done in Ireland since. Unheard of confiscations were made in the northern parts, upon grounds of plots and conspiracies never proved upon their supposed authors. The war of chicane succeeded to the war of arms, and of hostile statutes; a regular series of operations were carried on in the ordinary courts of Justice, and by special commissions, and inquisitions; first under the pretence of tenures, and then of titles in the crown, for the purpose of the total extirpation of the interest of the natives in their own soil — until this species of ravage being carried to the last excess of oppression and insolence Finally, Mr.
Lecky sums up the policy which had been pursued prior to the rebellion in the following words:—. It had become clear beyond all doubt to the native population that the old scheme of rooting them out from the soil was the settled policy of the Government; that the land which remained to them was marked as a prey by hungry adventurers, by the refuse of the population of England and Scotland, by men who cared no more for their rights and happiness than they did for the rights and happiness of the worms which were severed by their own spades.
Behind them [says Mr. Lecky] lay the maddening recollections of the wars of Elizabeth, when their parents had been starved by thousands, when unresisting peasants, when women, when children, had been deliberately massacred, and when no quarter had been given to the prisoners.
Before them lay the gloomy and almost certain prospect of banishment from the land which remained to them [and] of the extirpation of the religion which was fast becoming the passion as well as the consolation of their lives. The Rebellion broke out in Ulster on the night of October 22nd, It was the rising of an undisciplined body of men, a 'tumultuary rabble.
The Scotch settlers were not attacked. The Irish, apparently, desired to have no quarrel with them. The wrongs inflicted on Ireland had not been done by Scotland, but by England. It was the English name that was abominated. It was the Englishman that represented the dominion of the foreigner. It was his presence that revived memories of the past, and stirred up fears for the future.
It was the power of England that had crushed Ireland and, naturally, it was on the English 'garrison,' that the Irish fell. The English settlers were driven out, as the natives had been driven out thirty years before. The settlers were left to shift for themselves as the natives had been left to shift for themselves, the natives recovered their own. The settlers fled for refuge to the towns, perishing in thousands, through want and cold on the way.
Lecky, 'by far the greater number of those who were represented as massacred, died in this manner from cold, want, and hardships. Those who perished [says Mr.
Gardiner] were for the most part those who were driven naked through the cold November nights amongst a population which refused them a scanty covering, or a morsel of food in their hour of trial. To the Irish it seemed mercy enough when no actual blow was struck against the flying rout. Men hardly beyond middle life could remember the days when Mountjoy had harried Ulster, and when the sunken eye, and the pallid cheek of those who had been dearest to them had told too surely of the pitiless might of the Englishman.
It is clear that at the outset there was no intention on the part of the rebels to commit murders. Their sole object was to drive out the settlers and to recover the lands. Lecky reminds us, that even Sir Phelim O'Neil — the one blameworthy rebel leader — 'had the reputation much more of a weak and incapable than of a deliberately cruel man.
The Irish in the northern parts of your Majesty's Kingdom of Ireland, two nights last past, did rise with force, and have taken Charlemont, Dungannon, Tonragee, and The Newry, with Your Majesty's stores there — towns all of good consequence — and have slain only one man. On the 23rd December, , a Commission was issued by the Government to make inquiries on oath respecting the rebellion. The spirit in which the Commissioners — Mr.
Jones, Dean of Kilmore, and several other Protestant clergymen — set to work may be gathered from the statement of the objects of the Commission: 'To keep up the memory of the outrages committed by the Irish to posterity.
The Commissioners are instructed only to inquire into the 'losses' sustained by the English, and the 'robberies' committed by the Irish. A second Commission was issued on the 18th of January, , and 'murders' were included in it; but the fact that 'murders' were not included in the first seems to show that murders were not a prominent feature at the outbreak of the Rebellion. The general character of the Rebellion may, perhaps, be gathered from the following extract from Clogy's Life of Bedell :—.
There was no people under Heaven lived in a more flourishing state and condition for peace and plenty of all things desirable in this life, when, on a sudden, we were turned out of house and hold, and stripped of all outward enjoyments, and left naked and bare in the winter; and on the Sabbath day put to flight but had no place to flee to.
The land that was a little before like a garden of Eden was speedily turned into a desolate wilderness. The best history of the Rebellion was written by Mr. Warner , a Protestant clergyman, who lived in Ireland in the eighteenth century. He had strong prejudices against the Irish and the Catholics. Nevertheless, he wrote:—. Whatever cruelties are to be charged upon the Irish in the prosecution of their undertaking — and they are numerous and horrid — yet their first intention went no further than to strip the English and Protestants of their power and possessions, and, unless forced to it by opposition, not to shed any blood.
It is certain [says Mr. Lecky] that there was nothing resembling a massacre in the first days of the Rebellion. It is equally certain that, before a week had passed, the troops slaughtered numbers of the rebels without the loss of a man on their side. And [he adds] it is very difficult to distinguish [the cases of those] who were murdered in cold blood from the case of those who perished in fight; and it must be remembered that during the latter part of the time the English had been waging what was little less than a war of extermination against the Irish.
Petty , one of the Cromwellian plunderers, who naturally hated the people whom he had helped to rob, says, upon this question of who began the bloodshed: 'As for the bloodshed in the contest, God best knows who did occasion it' — a remarkable statement from such a quarter. To what extent he was responsible it may be difficult to say, but it is clear that he was quite unable to restrain the excesses of the 'tumultuary rabble,' when they had been driven to outrageous extremes by the butcheries of the disciplined armies of England.
It is probable [says Mr. Lecky, speaking of the charges brought against Phelim O'Neil] that these crimes [the murder of English persons] were exaggerated, and it is a remarkable and a significant fact that, when Owen Roe O'Neil assumed the command in July, , he found English prisoners alive in [Phelim's] camp. But Prendergast says:—. Lord Caulfield was shot at Clongorth Castle by one of the 'rabble;' but O'Neil was absent at the time, and knew nothing of the business.
Walpole — an Englishman — in his history of Ireland, says:—. In recounting the ferocity of the Irish insurgents, it should not, however, be forgotten that there were frequent cases of English and Scotch Protestants being protected by their Irish neighbours, and owing life and safety to their unselfish generosity.
Some of the Irish priests, and Jesuits, were especially conspicuous for these acts of Christian mercy, hiding terrified suppliants under the altar cloths, and striving to stop the bloodshed at the risk of their own lives. It is notorious, that wherever the rebels were led by competent commanders, outrages were rarely, if ever, committed.
No doubt fugitives were robbed, and sometimes killed by wandering bandits and starving and infuriated peasants; but, in the main, as Mr. Lecky says, 'there appears to have been no general attempt to destroy the fugitives.
He allowed English settlers to leave with their property. They set out for Dublin. The rector who accompanied them tells us what happened:—.
That night we all lay in open fields. Next day we were met by a party of Rebels, who killed some, robbed and spoiled the rest. Me they stripped to my shirt in miserable weather; my wife was not so barbarously used; both of us, with a multitude of others, hurried to Moein Hall. That night we lay in heaps, expecting every hour to be massacred. But they were not massacred. They ultimately reached Kilmore in safety, and took refuge with Bishop Bedell.
Finally, the numbers of fugitives increased to 2,, and these, then, continued their march to Dublin, accompanied by a rebel guard of At first the guard did their duty successfully, protecting the settlers from the fury of starving and naked peasants, who hung on the flank of the refugees. At last, as the mob swelled to larger dimensions, the guard was rushed, and the refugees plundered:—.
Although the Irish lords still held a degree of power over the land, there was a significant rift between the two different cultures in many ways.
As the discord grew, the Irish began to resist the English rule, which incrementally gave rise over the next few decades to set the scene for the Irish Rebellion of The evolution of historical thought regarding this event is particularly interesting, as the portrayal of the Irish and the English settlers has shifted throughout time, and has been shaped to its audience members. This essay seeks to investigate primary and secondary sources to contextualize the English standpoint, the victims, in juxtaposition with and the Irish testimonies, the rebels, taken during the Irish Rebellion of With a specific focus on contrasting the depositions from the Northern counties with those of the South, this paper will begin with the examination of the victims in Northern Ireland first, then move into an analysis of the rebel testimonies from counties, then analyze the depositions of victims and rebels from Southern Ireland.
This juxtaposition will highlight the ways in which these sources reveal that there is not one answer behind the motives or actions taken by the Irish rebels against the English, Protestant settlers other than power. To delve into this topic, one must understand the political and social conditions that the native Irish settlers faced, as well as the rights of the English that contributed to the acceleration of violence and uproar. However, on the other hand, the English rule felt that their power was attributed to the rights of the crown which ruled the kingdom of Ireland from afar.
The Irish Rebellion gave way to decades of brutality, corruption, and violence throughout the entire country. Beginning with the Northern counties of Ireland, which is where the conflict and tensions first began, one can detract that the rebellion as told through the testimonies of the victims reveal the specific targeting of the English settlers upon the Irish lands to regain their power.
One example of this is shown in the deposition of James Nickson who was a victim in Derry in Northern Ireland in Nickson recounts that when the rebellion first broke out in Ireland that he was living with his parents at the age of His family, primarily his father, was aiding the rebels with land and other assistance in lieu of protection for roughly six weeks. After the six weeks, the rebels turned on the family and gruesomely murdered his mother and father.
This story suggests torture, slaughter, and intent. This also implies the desperate nature for power and security that the English settlers found themselves in at this time. Another example of a victim deposition from Northern Ireland is that of John Gibbs in in the county of Tyrone against a man named John Allen.
Gibbs lived near Benborbe when the rebellion broke out, and witnessed a couple murders of the English settlers, and heard numerous tales of more. His wife was a nurse for some of the rebels and informed him of three murders that she knew that John Allen committed. Thus, one would be likely to assume the murders stem from a place of religious difference, and that the victims were targets of the rebels because of their religion.
However, it is crucial to note that at this time the English Protestants had previously held the power over the native, Irish, Catholics within Ireland prior to the rebellion. Whether religion was the primary drive for the murders remains unknown. However, one could argue that it was not so much the religion itself as it was what the religion represented in the eyes of the native, Irish, Catholics: power.
The rebel depositions from this database typically reveal one of two things: they are either written from the perspective or deposition of the rebel being tried in court, in which case they deny all accusations.
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