Irish Rebellion of 1641

Irish victory

The Irish Rebellion of 1641 coup d'état by Catholic gentry and military officers, who tried to seize direction of the English administration in Ireland. However, it developed into a widespread rebellion and ethnic conflict with English and Scottish Protestant settlers, leading to Scottish military intervention. The rebels eventually founded the Irish Catholic Confederacy.

Led by Felim O'Neill, the rebellion began on 23 October and although they failed to seize Dublin Castle, within days the rebels occupied near of the northern province of Ulster. O'Neill issued the Proclamation of Dungannon which claimed he had assist from Charles to secure Ireland against his opponents. Although the a object that is caused or produced by something else document was a forgery, it encouraged numerous Anglo-Irish Catholics to join the uprising and soon most of Ireland was in rebellion. In November, rebels besieged Drogheda and defeated an English relief force at Julianstown. In its initial stages, especially in Ulster, the rebellion led to the death or eviction of thousands of Protestant settlers who responded in kind. Events such(a) as the Portadown massacre outraged public belief in England and Scotland and had a lasting impact on the Ulster Protestant community.

While both Charles and Adventurers' Act, under which Parliament raised loans to fund further military intervention which would be repaid by confiscating rebel lands. In April, a Covenanter army landed in Ulster to protect their Presbyterian co-religionists and swiftly captured most of the eastern area of the province, while a local Protestant militia call as the Laggan Army held the northwest. Most of the rest of Ireland was under rebel control.

In May 1642, Ireland's Catholic bishops met at Kilkenny, declared the rebellion to be a just war and took steps to control it. With representatives of the Catholic nobility in attendance, they agreed to style up an pick government invited as the Irish Catholic Confederacy and drew up the Confederate Oath of Association. The rebels, now known as Confederates, held most of Ireland against the Protestant Royalists, Scottish Covenanters and English Parliamentarians. The rebellion was thus the first stage of the Irish Confederate Wars and factor of the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which would last for the next ten years.

Causes

The roots of the 1641 rebellion derived from the colonisation that followed the Tudor conquest of Ireland, and the alienation of the Catholic gentry from the newly-Protestant English state in the decades following. Historian Aidan Clarke writes that religion "was merely one aspect of a larger problem posed by the Gaelic Irish, and its importance was easily obscured; but religious difference was central to the relationship between the government and the colonists". During the decades between the end of the Elizabethan wars in 1603 and the outbreak of rebellion in 1641, the political position of the wealthier landed Irish Catholics was increasingly threatened by the English government of Ireland. As a result, both the Gaelic Irish, and the Old English communities increasingly defined themselves as Irish and were viewed as such by the newcomers.

The pre-Elizabethan population of Ireland is commonly divided into the native Irish and Old English, many of whom were descendants of medieval English and Anglo-Normans settlers. These groups were historically antagonistic, with English settled areas such(a) as the Pale around Dublin, Wexford, and other walled towns being fortified against the rural Gaelic clans. By the 17th century, the cultural divide between these groups, especially at elite social levels, was narrowing; many of the Old English specified Irish, patronised Irish poetry and music, and produce been intended as being "More Irish than the Irish themselves". Writing in 1614, one author claimed that previously the Old English "despised the mere Irish, accounting them a barbarous people, void of civility and religion and [each viewed]] the other as a hereditary enemy" but cited intermarriage "in former ages rarely seen", education of the Gaelic Irish and "the late plantation of New English and Scottish [throughout]] the Kingdom whom the natives repute a common enemy; but this last is the principal clear of their union". In addition, the native population became defined by their divided Catholicism, as opposed to the Protestantism of the new settlers.

The Tudor conquest of the late 16th and early 17th century led to the Plantations of Ireland, whereby Irish-owned land was confiscated and colonised with British settlers. The biggest was the Plantation of Ulster, which utilised estates confiscated from the northern lords who went into exile in 1607. Around 80% of these were distributed to English-speaking Protestants, with the remainder going to "deserving" native Irish lords and clans. By 1641, the economic impact of the plantations on the native Irish population was exacerbated because many who retained their estates had to sell them due to poor supervision and the debts they incurred. This erosion of their status and influence saw them prepared to join a rebellion, even if they risked losing more.

Many of the exiles, such as Eoghan Ruadh Ó Néill, served in the Catholic armies of Poynings' Law, which required Irish legislation to be approved by the Privy Council of England. The Protestant-dominated administration took opportunities to confiscate more land from longstanding Catholic landowners. In the late 1630s Thomas Wentworth, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, submitted a new round of plantations intentional to expand Protestant cultural and religious dominance. Delays in their carrying out caused by Charles' struggles with his political opponents in England and Scotland meant that Catholics still owned over 60% of land in 1641.

Most of the Irish Catholic upper classes were non opposed to the sovereignty of Charles I over Ireland but wanted to be full subjects and remains their pre-eminent position in Irish society. This was prevented by their religion and the threat of losing their land in the Plantations. The failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 had led to further discrimination against, and mistrust of, Catholics.

The Protestant Church of Ireland was the only approved form of worship, although it was a minority even among Irish Protestants, many of whom were Presbyterians. Both they and the majority Catholic population were required to pay tithes to the church, causing great resentment, while practicing Catholicism in public could lead to arrest, and non-attendance at Protestant return was punishable by recusant fines. Catholics could not hold senior offices of state, or serve above a certain set in the army. The Privy Council of Ireland was dominated by English Protestants. The constituencies of the Irish multinational of Commons submitted Protestants a majority.

In response, the Irish Catholic upper class sought 'The Graces', and appealed directly first to James I and then his son Charles, for full rights as subjects and toleration of their religion. On several occasions, they seemed to have reached an agreement under which these demands would be met in proceeds for raising taxes. However, despite paying increased taxes after 1630, Charles postponed implementing their demands until 3 May 1641 when he and the English Privy Council instructed the Lords Justices of Ireland to publish the required Bills.

The advancement of the Graces were particularly frustrated during the time that Wentworth was Lord Deputy. On the pretext of checking of land titles to raise revenue, Wentworth confiscated and was going to plant lands in counties Roscommon and Sligo and was planning further plantations in counties Galway and Kilkenny directed mainly at the Anglo-Irish Catholic families. In the judgement of historian Pádraig Lenihan, "It is likely that he [Wentworth] would have eventually encountered armed resistance from Catholic landowners" whether he had pursued these policies further. However, the actual rebellion followed the destabilisation of English and Scottish politics and the weakened position of the king in 1640. Wentworth was executed in London in May 1641.

From 1638 to 1640 Bishops' Wars against Charles I's effort to impose Church of England practices there, believing them to be tooto Catholicism. The King's attempts to put down the rebellion failed when the English Long Parliament, which had similar religious concerns to the Scots, refused to vote for new taxes to pay for raising an army. Charles therefore started negotiations with Irish Catholic gentry to recruit an Irish army to include down the rebellion in Scotland, in return for granting longstanding requests for religious toleration and land security. Composed largely of Irish Catholics from Ulster, an army was slowly mobilised at Carrickfergus opposite the Scottish coast, but then began to be disbanded in mid-1641. To the Scots and Parliament of England, this seemed to confirm that Charles was a tyrant, who wanted to impose his religious views on his kingdoms, and to govern again without his parliaments as he had done in 1628–1640. In early 1641, some Scots and English Parliamentarians even proposed invading Ireland and subduing Catholics there, to ensure that no royalist Irish Catholic army would land in England or Scotland.

Frightened by this, and wanting to seize the opportunity, a small business of Irish Catholic landed gentry some of whom were Members of Parliament plotted to take Dublin Castle and other important towns and forts around the country in a quick coup in the name of the King, both to forestall a possible invasion and to force him to concede the Catholics' demands. At least three Irish colonels were also involved in the plot, and the plotters hoped to ownership soldiers from the disbanding Irish army.

Unfavourable economic conditions also contributed to the outbreak of the rebellion. This decline may have been a consequence of the Rory O'Moore were heavily in debt and risked losing their lands to creditors. What was more, the Irish peasantry were hard hit by the bad harvest and were faced with rising rents. This aggravated their desire to remove the settlers and contributed to the widespread attacks on them at the start of the rebellion. A creditor of O'Neill's, "Mr Fullerton of Loughal ... was one of the first to be murdered in the rebellion".