1. Christianity and
Identity in Ireland
Ireland in the 17 th
Century

2. IV. THE END OF GAELIC
IRELAND
• Suppression of Gaelic earls in Munster left
Gaelic Ulster dangerously exposed
• Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone (1550-1516)
• Most powerful, and last of the great Gaelic
lords
• Upbringing in England and the Pale
• Loyal to the Crown
• Represses Scots-Gaelic colonisation in
north Ulster
• Militarises Ulster
• Recognised the fragility of his preferment
by the Crown and the implications of the
new ideology
• Would have to choose – am I an English
earl or a Gaelic cheiftan?
• Actions of O’Donnell’s and Maguires
forced his hand
• Ulster at War: 1594-1603 (Nine Year War)

3. • Initially successful:
– Ford of Biscuits (1594)
– Clontibret (1595)
– Yellow Ford (1598)
• Couldn’t take towns
• Emboldened by initial success
• Appeals to Spain and Pope
• Why might this have been a mistake?
– Spanish Armada, 1588
• 1599 – appeals to Old English: “Faith and
Fatherland”
• Draws up demands
• Lord Mountjoy appointed LD, brings
20,000 men to Kinsale to meet Spanish
soldiers
• Tyrone surrenders, but given generous
terms
• However, the age of Gaelic rule is over

4. Flight of the Earls, September 1607

5. James I/VI
• King of Scotland
from 1567
• 1603, becomes king
of England and
Ireland
• Plantation of Ulster
began in 1608

6. Plantation of Ulster
• Lowland vs. Highland
– 1493, James IV breaks
“Lordship of the Isles
– As 16th century progresses
Gaelic world seen as culturally
degenerate
• "void of the knawledge and
feir of God" and guilty of "all
kynd of barbarous and bestile
cruelteis“
– 1609, Statutes of Iona
• Escheated lands presents
James I/VI with opportunity
drive a wedge into the Gaelic
world
• Flight of Earls, 4th September
1607, Privy Council agree to
plantation on 29th September

7. Plantation of Ulster
• Unlike colonisation under Mary
and Elizabeth Ulster Plantation is
privatised
– County of Coleraine granted to
‘Companies of the City of London’
– Private Undertakers
– Servitors
– Deserving Irish, 20%
• Fortified house and 24 young
Protestant men per 1000 acres
• Part of a wider transatlantic colonial
project (c.f. Virginia Company, 1609)
• Driven by Ideology:
Providentialism
• Often investors were Puritans

11. Religion and Plantation
• Reformation had failed in
Ireland
• Established Church was
marginal
• Majority of 1.2 million
population worship in
underground Catholic
movement
• But: New English were
Puritan and more
stridently anti-Catholic
• James Ussher, 1581-1656

12. Religion and Plantation
• Calvinist 15 Articles (1615)
• Ussher brings reformed bishops
from Scotland to Ulster
• Andrew Knox, Raphoe
• Robert Echlin, Down and
Connor
• 1622, 64 Scots Presbyterian
ministers serving in CoI
• 1625, Ussher appointed
Archbishop of Armagh
• 1000s of mostly poor Scots
Presbyterians colonised Antrim
and Down
• Hated official church, “raw
Presbyterianism”

13. Scots Presbyterians serving in Church of Ireland
• 1613 Edward Brice @ Broadisland
• 1615 Robert Cunningham @ Hollywood
• 1619 John Ridge, an English dissenter, @ Antrim
• 1619 Josias Welsh, the grandson of John Knox, at Templepatrick
• 1621 Rev John Hubbard brought his congregation from London to
Carrickfergus
• 1623 James Glendinning replaced Hubbard @ Carrickfergus
• 1623 Robert Blair @ Bangor
• 1625 George Dunbar a former minister at Ayr and prisoner in Blackness Castle
settled in Larne
• 1625 James Hamilton, nephew of Lord Claneboye, @ Ballywalter
• 1627 Andrew Stewart @ Donegore
• 1630 John Livingston at Kilinchy

14. Six Mile Water Revival
• James Glendinning incumbent of Carnmoney and a lecturer at Carrickfergus
—largely English.
• Rev. Robert Blair invited Glendinning to move to Oldstone (Muckamore)
among Scots.
• Glendinning underwent transformation
– instances of people swooning and of 'high breathing and panting'
• Welsh, Blair, Ridge, Cunningham and Hamilton joined in the revival that
swept the river valley of the Six Mile Water.
• Glendinning left the district in 1630.
– Ill and intending to visit the seven churches of Asia.
• In 1630s a monthly meetings sometimes with 1,500 attending
• Not evangelical, linked to Presbyterian doctrines of election and predestination
• Helped to sustain a poor people in a tough pioneer environment; gave them
purpose and galvanised their identity

15. James I/VI Policy in Ireland
• Overall, things settled.
• Of James’ overall legacy he told Lord
Deputy Chichester:
– ‘the settling of religion, the introducing
civility, order, and government amongst a
barbarous and unsubdued people, to be acts
of piety and glory, and worthy always of a
Christian prince to endeavour.
• 1628: ‘Graces’
– OE and NE to provide £120,000 over three years
and not support France and Spain
• No Oath of Supremacy
• No imposition of Recusancy fines
• Guaranteed security of titles held for more than 60
years
• Major advance for policy in Ireland

16. Charles I, 1625-1649
• Background: 30 years war
• Religious tensions in Europe at all
time high; radical Puritanism gains
voice in England
• Emphasized divine right of kings
• Financially impoverished
• Concentrates power in Privy
Council, refuses to call Parliament
• William Laud and “Laudianism”
• To Puritans, Laudianism =
Catholicism in disguise

17. Charles I Policy in Ireland
• Thomas Wentworth appointed LD,
1632-1639
• Ireland is corrupt; no allies, just interests
– New English: investigates Richard
Boyle and recovers money
– Old English: promises to implement
“graces” in return for more money but
backtracks once subsidies secured
– Gaelic Ireland: confiscated north
Wicklow for himself
– Presbyterian Ulster: creates “court of
high commission”, implements Laudian
reform, deprives some Presbyterian
CoI clergy of their living, prosecutes
others
• Major improvements to infrastructure,
manages to make Ireland profitable, but
at huge cost

18. Irish Repercussions of Charles’
failed Scottish Policy
• 1637, institution of
Scottish Book of Common
Prayer
• Does not go down well!
• 1638, Scottish National
Covenant
• 300,000 signatures
• Modelled on OT
covenants, any problem
with this?

20. Irish Repercussions of Charles’
failed Scottish Policy
• Covenant widely subscribed Sir George Radcliffe (1640
to in Scots-Ulster also '...many thousands in the North never took
• This alarms an already the oath... they will shortly return, to any
that dares question them, such an answer
suspicious Dublin Castle as Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, made
• Wentworth issues “Black to Sir John Comyn, who, charging him
with breach of oath, taken at
Oath” Westminster to King Edward, replies,
• Further helps to establish a with cleaving his head in two. None is
distinctive Ulster-Scottish so dim-sighted, but sees the
general inclination of the Ulster
identity Scots to the covenant: and God
• How would Gaelic and Old forbid they should tarry there till the Earl
of Argyll brings them arms to cut our
English Ireland have felt about throats...'
the enthusiasm shown by the
Ulster Presbyterians to the
Covenant?

21. Charles I Policy in Ireland
• British network of radical Puritans
(particularly William Pym and John
Clotworthy) see the Scottish crisis as an
opportunity to accomplish their long
cherished aim
– Arrest of Laud
– Church reform
– Godly Government
• True to the Covenant, Scottish mobilise
an army, Bishops War, 1639-40
• Truce of Newcastle
• Wentworth raises an Irish catholic army
of 9000 to support Charles
• Charles is forced to call Parliament and
calls Wentworth to London to manage
troublesome Puritan faction

22. Ulster Rising/Rebellion
• Puritan “long Parliament” after
1641
• Gaelic Lords, headed by Sir Phelim
O’Neill use Wentowrth’s army to
mount rebellion
• Soon deteriorates into bitter
sectarian fighting
– Portadown drownings
– Islandmagee massacre
• Sir John Temple’s Irish Rebellion
(1646) claimed 120,000 Protestants
killed.
– More than are actually in the country.
• Perhaps accurate number 3-5,000
• Propaganda has enormous impact
in Britian – confirms Puritans
worst fears!!