Revolution

Tyrconnell must bear considerable responsibility for the way the situation developed in Ireland under James II, and likewise James himself for allowing Tyrconnell to pursue the courses of action that he did. Yet in accounting for the rapid destabilization of Irish politics after 1685 it would be wrong to place too much emphasis on the role of individuals. There were major structural problems in Ireland, pent-up resentments, fears and insecurities that came to a head with the accession of a Catholic king. James II's reign, therefore, did not so much destabilize Ireland as reveal, with a clarity and forcefulness not seen during Charles II's time, what the destabilizing forces in Ireland were. Tensions between Protestants and Catholics were obviously a fundamental cause of conflict, but it is important to recognize that opinion in Ireland never divided simply along Protestant versus Catholic lines. Divisions existed within both Protestant and Catholic groupings: there were tensions between those of the Established Church of Ireland and various Protestant nonconformists, such as the Presbyterians and Quakers; the Catholics were divided between the Old English and Gaelic Irish; while not even all Catholics of Old English stock responded to developments under Tyrconnell in similar ways. There were other sources of tensions besides religion. One concerned the nature of the relationship between England and Ireland and whether Ireland was a conquered colony or an independent kingdom ruled by the king of England, which was a source of division amongst Protestants as well as an issue which Old English Catholics typically saw differently from the native Irish. Legal and constitutional issues were also at stake, which raised questions about the power of the crown in Ireland and the extent to which policies pursued under James II were in violation of the rule of law. Last, though by no means least, there were fundamental economic tensions, relating to both trade and land, which tended to coincide with the Catholic/Protestant divide, but not invariably so: those Catholics who had managed to regain their land at the Restoration or purchased land from the Cromwellian settlers, or who had achieved a healthy living through trade under Charles II, might be just as alarmed about developments under James and Tyrconnell as Protestants.

EARLY SIGNS OF DESTABILIZATION

In late 1684 the Earl of Sunderland, in an attempt to neutralize the influence of his main political rival at court, Lord Treasurer Rochester, persuaded Charles II to send Rochester to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant to replace the ageing Ormonde. Rochester was a staunch Anglican royalist and Charles, on making the appointment, was himself determined that his new man should uphold the Protestant interest in Ireland. He thus instructed Rochester to fill any vacant livings ‘with pious and Orthodox persons’, and to ensure that the oaths of allegiance and supremacy were administered to all officers and soldiers in the army and all governors of towns, forts and castles.⁵ At his accession James, angry at Sunderland's attempt to dispatch his brother-in-law and loyal ally into the political wilderness, cancelled Rochester's appointment and instead ordered Ormonde to hand over the government of Ireland to two lords justices – Archbishop Boyle of Armagh, the Lord Chancellor, and Arthur Forbes, Earl of Granard, marshall of the army – until a new Lord Lieutenant was chosen.⁶ James also appointed a new, Protestant, privy council, although he did instruct the lords justices to consult Tyrconnell on matters regarding the army. Tyrconnell had hoped to be put in charge of the government of Ireland himself – Sunderland, who was busy trying to cement his own position at the English court by building alliances with Catholics, having allegedly promised him as much. At this stage, however, James was unwilling to risk alienating Protestant opinion in England by entrusting Ireland to a Catholic native, and in August decided to make Rochester's elder brother, the staunchly Anglicanroyalist Earl of Clarendon, Lord Lieutenant. The Catholics were bitterly disappointed to see the government lodged in the hands of a person from whom they could expect little favour. Clarendon eventually took up his position in Ireland in January 1686.⁷

This change in personnel immediately introduced a degree of instability into Irish politics. Under Ormonde, Ireland had been in the hands of an experienced politician who knew the Irish situation well: Ormonde was an Irish peer and landowner whose interests were based predominantly in Ireland, and although a Protestant himself, headed an Old English family that was predominantly Catholic. Clarendon knew nothing about Ireland, and frequently confessed his ignorance to the King during the early months of his administration. Clarendon's position was further undermined by the fact that for advice about Irish affairs James chose to rely extensively on Tyrconnell, who for much of the period between December 1685 and December 1686 was based at court in London. Clarendon felt, with much justification, that he was continually being undermined by decisions taken at Whitehall as a result of Tyrconnell's influence, and on at least one occasion was to protest that he thought ‘the Chief-Governor should be a little consulted with’.⁸ When Clarendon was recalled from the government of Ireland in January 1687, Ormonde quipped that it was questionable whether ‘in truth and reallity hee was ever in it’.⁹

The mere fact that a new monarch had succeeded to the throne raised hopes that the time might at last have come when the existing state of affairs in Ireland could be challenged. At the broadest level of generality, there were two main sources of resentment within Ireland: English imperial domination (i.e., undue control by a foreign power), and the privileged position (politically, religiously and economically) enjoyed by Protestants of the Established Church. Although these tended to overlap, since the Catholics of Ireland were the biggest losers in the imperial relationship, they did not invariably do so. Protestant merchants, in particular, resented the way the Irish economy was subordinated to that of England. One of the first acts of James's English parliament was to revive those laws that had lapsed with the death of Charles II. Thus in June 1685 it revived the Navigation Act, which prevented Ireland from trading directly with the North American plantations, and other acts forbidding the importation of certain Irish products, such as tallow and hide, into England, leaving ‘the merchants of this country… much dejected’, as one Protestant correspondent reported.¹⁰ Some commercial interests simply found the domestic market too small to sustain their economic prosperity. It was for this reason, for example, that the Dublin clothiers and stuff-weavers petitioned Clarendon in 1686 ‘to intercede with the King to suspend the act prohibiting Irish manufactures from export to his foreign plantations’, although to no avail.¹¹

The fact that the new king was a Catholic, however, inevitably raised expectations (or conversely created anxieties) that the balance of power in Ireland might shift in favour of the Catholics. According to Charles O'Kelly, a Catholic landowner of Old Irish stock writing after the Revolution, the Catholics had great hopes that the King ‘would forthwith restore to the heavenly powers their temples and altars, and also to the natives their properties and estates, of which they had been, for so many years, so unjustly despoiled’.¹² The Protestant clergyman Dr William King, in another retrospective account, alleged that on the accession of James II the Irish Catholics ‘affirmed, both publickly and privately’ that they would soon get back their estates and churches, ‘that Ireland must be a Catholick Country whatever it cost’, and that they would make the English ‘as poor devils as when they came first into Ireland’.¹³ Some Protestant landowners were certainly apprehensive right from the beginning of the reign. In August 1685 Sir William Petty, who had acquired substantial landholdings in County Kerry for his services to the Protectorate, recorded his fears that something might be done ‘to the danger of the Settlement’.¹⁴ In early October Ormonde, who had by now returned to England, learned that ‘the Irish Roman Catholics’ from the area around his estates in Kilkenny had been encouraged to believe that but for him ‘they should long since have obtained an act of indemnity and restitution to all their estates’, and that ‘the rabble’, egged on by the clergy, were threatening to vent their spleen by setting fire to his house and ‘all in it’.¹⁵

Such accounts are perhaps more testimony to the paranoia (mixed, no doubt, with a sense of guilt) of Protestant landlords than to the reality of any violent challenge they faced at this stage from dispossessed Catholics. Some Catholics in Ireland, however, did begin to organize to bring peaceful pressure to bear for change. During the autumn of 1685, the Catholic lords and gentry of the province of Leinster, with the backing of Tyrconnell, drafted a circular letter to fellow Catholics in other parts of Ireland to solicit contributions to cover the cost of sending agents to England to represent their grievances to the crown. After first complaining about the unjustifiable separation of the Church of England from the Catholic Church, the Leinster Catholics stated they intended to ask the King to remove ‘all marks of distinction’ from his subjects in Ireland ‘by rendering them and their posterity capable of employments, civil and military, and freedom of corporations’. In this way, it was hoped, ‘animosities will be forgot’ and ‘discord and division removed’.¹⁶ Efforts to organize an effective Catholic pressure group to lobby the King continued through the winter of 1685/6. On 11 January, a group of dispossessed Catholic landlords held a meeting at the Dublin home of Thomas Nugent, a Catholic lawyer from an Old English family, where they decided to send agents to England to explain to James (or, rather, remind him) ‘how there were several lands vested in the King by law, whereby he might relieve them in a great measure, without shaking the acts of settlement’. Clarendon insisted that they should address any grievances through him, while on 20 February James himself sent orders stating that he did not want any agents representing the old proprietors coming over to England. The irony was that one of the major beneficiaries of the Restoration land settlement in Ireland had been the King himself, who as Duke of York had been granted 169,431 acres taken from the regicides in the early 1660s, thereby diminishing the stock available to compensate the dispossessed.¹⁷ Moreover, there were clearly divisions within the ranks of the Irish Catholics. Some doubted whether sending Catholics was the best way to proceed and refused to contribute anything towards the cost, while those who had been restored to their old estates by the Acts of Settlement and Explanation or acquired new land since the Restoration were naturally reluctant to rock the boat. There was even a report at one stage that ‘the natives’ who had gained ‘by the present settlement’ were to join ‘in an address to his Majesty not to alter it’.¹⁸

The campaign against the land settlement was also fought out in the press. In September 1685, Nicholas French's Narrative of the Settlement and Sale of Ireland, a bitter attack on the Restoration settlement and on how the Irish nation had been betrayed by a corrupt English administration, which had first appeared in 1668, was republished. At the same time appeared Twelve Quaeries relating to the Interest of Ireland, attacking Ormonde and everyone else involved in the Irish settlement, and complaining ‘that no people upon the Face of the Earth’ had been so ‘unchristianly and inhumanely’ dealt with as the Irish.¹⁹ In March 1686, Dublin customs officials seized various books that had been smuggled in from France, including a tract entitled ‘A Ponderation upon Certain Branches and Parts of the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, passed Anno 1660’ and French's Bleeding Iphigenia of 1675, which went beyond his earlier Narrative by offering a justification of the Irish rebellion of 1641 as a defensive war.²⁰

The English (both in England and Ireland), by contrast, saw the land settlement as ‘the Magna Carta of Ir[eland]’, which ‘like the banks of Holland’ kept out ‘an ocean of barbarisme and poverty’, as one manuscript reply to French's Narrative put it in November 1685. The Irish, this tract continued, had forfeited their land ‘by the most barbarous rebellion that ever was’, and although the natives might outnumber the English by ten to one, ‘their rebellions have been 100 for one’. The land settlement, to this author's mind, had brought nothing but benefit; in less than twenty years it had transformed Ireland, which had been made desolate by war and plague, into ‘a fruitful, populous and pleasant country’, ‘drained the bogs’, and ‘improved the whole Kingdom to double the revenue to the K[ing] and rent to the Subject it yeelded before the rebellion’.²¹ In fact, the various Protestant landowning groups in Ireland were so alarmed by the Catholic challenge to the land settlement that they drafted petitions to the King and the English parliament, responding to the claims made in French's Narrative and the Twelve Quaeries and asking to be confirmed in the possession of their estates, although the prorogation of 20 November 1685 meant that they were never presented. A petition from the ‘Old Protestants’ claimed that in 1641 the Church and the English Protestants had possessed about one-third of the land in Ireland, worth £450,000 p.a., but that by 1653, as a result of the depredations caused by civil war, their lands were not worth one-thirtieth of what they had been in 1641 and that, still, in 1685, despite the recoveries since the Restoration, their lands were worth only £220,000 p.a. Another petition, from ‘the 49 Men’ (those Protestants who had served in the royal forces in Ireland prior to June 1649), claimed that they had not yet received four shillings in the pound for their investiments in the estates of Irish rebels, nor had they been compensated for the land restored to the Catholics at the Restoration. A third, from adventurers and Cromwellian soldiers (those who had acquired lands in Ireland as a result of parliament's victory in the Civil War), claimed that the parliament which made the Act of Settlement had been illegal and had wrongly turned them out of their estates, adding that they thought the Catholics of Ireland were in a better position in 1685 than they had been for the past 500 years.²²

James assured Clarendon, when he appointed him Lord Lieutenant, that he would not touch the settlement of Ireland but rather leave ‘all things as they were’.²³ His immediate worry was over security, and whether discontented Protestants in Ireland might choose to rise in sympathy with Monmouth or Argyll. In fact, there does not appear to have been a significant Irish dimension to the rebellions of 1685; indeed, many in Ireland rejoiced when they were finally put down. One Dubliner recorded that there was ‘great joy’ on the news of Monmouth's defeat, ‘especially amongst the Irish papists’, who burned an effigy of the Duke in Francis Street.²⁴ Yet most Protestants too, contemporary accounts agree, were pleased to see the rebellions fail. The official day of thanksgiving, 23 August, saw public bonfires in a number of towns, including Dublin, Waterford and Youghal; Waterford even sent a loyal address to the King.²⁵

It is true that there were hints of disaffection amongst Protestants in Ireland in 1685. The government feared that the Ulster Protestants might join with the Scottish covenanters, or even that Argyll might land in the north of Ireland, but it speedily dispatched troops to the area and Ulster remained loyal.²⁶ Rumours of disaffection in certain quarters circulated both at the time and in the immediate aftermath of the rebellions, but it is unclear how much truth lay behind them. Most appear to have been of little substance; indeed, the government had to issue a proclamation on 10 July against the spreading of false reports to try to put a stop to the ‘many stories about Monmouth's followers’.²⁷ In the summer of 1685 one Isaiah Amos gave a series of depositions in which he alleged that the mayor of Clonmel, John Hanbury, and the former mayor, Stephen Moore (who, when mayor in 1682, had opposed the town's loyal address), were conspiring to raise men to ‘arise and join with Argyll and the Duke of Monmouth’, to ensure that ‘no Popish King should reign’. Subsequent investigations, however, revealed that Amos was pursuing a personal vendetta against Moore and had conspired to persuade others to give false evidence.²⁸ Some time after the failure of the Monmouth rebellion, a Kinsale merchant by the name of Robert Clarke wrote to the commander of the troops stationed in the town admitting that he had been involved in a Monmouthite conspiracy involving some thirty-five local men, including the town sovereign (the head of the town government). According to Clarke, when they learned of Monmouth's landing in England, they held a number of meetings ‘where they dranke to Monmouth's good successe, wishing he had Landed there instead of England’, and drew up lists of those who were ready to serve, some of whom were to go to England ‘to represent the friendship of the County to Monmouth’. Whatever the truth of the matter, the plans came to nothing. Clarke later refused to confirm what he had initially written and was said by some to be mad; the justices who examined him ‘thought him more knave than mad’.²⁹

Malicious prosecution became something of a craze in Ireland in the autumn and winter of 1685/6. ‘If a man be angry with his neighbour upon any private account’, Clarendon reported to Sunderland, ‘he is threatened to be accused of having said ill things of the King, when Duke, four or more years ago.’ Clarendon received many such frivolous accusations ‘from most parts of the kingdom’, which he dutifully investigated, even though ‘multitudes of people’ were ‘thereby harassed to very little purpose’. For example, he uncovered a conspiracy to swear treason against John Chetwood, vicar of Ardbracan in County Meath, alleging that Chetwood had said the previous June that ‘the Duke of Monmouth has as good a title to the crown as the Duke of York’ and that he ‘hoped in God that the King's head would be cut off as his father's was’. Apparently the conspirators had raised a ‘common purse’ to pay ‘twenty pounds and half-a-crown a day… unto every man that would give any information of treason’. A number of outlawed Tories (that is, Irish bandits who made their living by stealing cattle) also came before Clarendon, offering to make ‘great discoveries of the Duke of Monmouth's plot’ if they could receive pardons.³⁰

The rebellions in Scotland and England nevertheless had a powerful impact in Ireland, even though there was no rising in Ireland itself. According to one Irish-based correspondent, the news of the rebellion, and the fear of what might happen in Ireland if Monmouth were to succeed, generated ‘a great deal of ill blood… between the English and Irish’. The Irish, who had for so long been castigated as rebels by the English, were now able to turn the charge on the English. The English tried to defend themselves by saying that although this was a rebellion in England, it was ‘only by the worst of the King's subjects there’; the Irish, however, alleged that ‘all the English universally’, both in England and Ireland, were ‘devoted to Monmouth’. The spread of such ‘hot discourses’ promoted a climate of increased distrust between the English and the Irish, leading to reciprocal accusations that the others were about to rise against them. Reports spread among the English that a number of friars, in various parts of the country, had preached sermons on Ezekiel 9, vv. 5–9, a text which contains the exhortation to ‘slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women’, although it does not appear that any such sermon was ever preached.³¹ On 21 June 1685 the town of Borrisokane in County Tipperary was alarmed by a rumour that there was to be ‘a rising… of the Irish’ and that all the Protestants ‘should have their throats cut by them’. In self-defence, the Protestants decided to keep watch that night, parading through the streets armed with swords, staves, or guns. The government, on the other hand, was concerned about what appeared to be ‘disorderly and suspicious meetings of the disaffected’, and ordered the judges to prosecute the Protestants for ‘a riotous and seditious unlawful assembly’. Ten were found guilty, while over fifty people were convicted for spreading the report.³² Many Catholics were convinced that if Monmouth and Argyll had been victorious, the Cromwellians in Ireland would all have joined with the rebels ‘and cut our throats’.³³

Tensions ran particularly high in County Londonderry, in the area known as the Glen or Society of London Woods, between the local Scottish Presbyterians and the Irish Catholics. The Irish started ‘Braging over their Ale’ that ‘the British and Protestants had [had] their tyme and they Expected theires’, and ‘if the Duke of Monmouth gave the Kinge ane defeate… the Irish would all Rise and Kill and Murder’. Lists were drawn up of those Irish fit to bear arms, and many Irish were seen carrying swords who had never previously worn them. Fearful that the Irish might ‘fall upon them and Cutt theire throts’, the Scots decided to keep armed watches at night. These ‘Tumultuous watches’ in turn ‘soe terrifyed the Irish’, it was said, ‘that they durst not sleepe in their beds for that they were told they designed to fall upon them’. The depth of national antagonisms is revealed by an incident that happened on the night of 10 June 1685, when an Irishman called Henry O'Hagan, somewhat the worse for drink, accosted a Scottish alehousekeeper, asking ‘what had… the Scotch to doe in their country’ and bidding him ‘Get out of their Country’. The proprietor could only protest that he had been born in Ireland. A local JP tried to allay fears by telling the Scots that ‘the Irish Idle discourse over theire drinke was little to be regarded’, and assuring the Irish that ‘the Brittish’, as he called the Scottish Presbyterians, had no option but to ‘be peaceable’ lest ‘the protestants and papists should take parte together against them’. Nevertheless, the incident, like that at Borrisokane, highlights the extent of the distrust and hatred between the different religious and national communities within Ireland.³⁴

Concerns about security at the time of these rebellions, coupled with rumours questioning the loyalty of the militia, led the English government in June to order the lords justices to disarm all disaffected and suspected persons – first in the north of Ireland, then in the rest of the country – and to have all the arms currently in the hands of the militia delivered into the government stores. Militiamen even had to give up their personal guns or pistols that they kept for hunting or protection, while many Protestant gentry who were not in the militia also found they had their weapons seized, although this was certainly not authorized. Catholics, given that they could not serve in the militia, were not subject to the recall.³⁵ The Protestants resented the implication that they were ‘not fit to be trusted with arms’, as if they were ‘persons disaffected to [the King's] service’, when they had all taken the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and many tried to defy the order. The Irish gentry, by contrast, taunted the Protestants by spreading reports that their arms were ‘thus called in to be given to them [the Irish] as the King's best subjects’.³⁶ Disarming was not at heart a Catholic versus Protestant issue. Archbishop Boyle thought that ‘several of the Militia’ were ‘faulty enough, at least in their inclinations, and deserved to be proceeded against’, and agreed that James had the right to disband any part of his armed forces when he no longer required their services. But Boyle, who claimed it had always been the intention to give back the weapons to those ‘believed to be honest and fit to be intrusted with their arms’, thought the disarming was carried too far, and left the English (especially those in more remote places) vulnerable to attack from Irish Tories.³⁷ Reports flooded in of various robberies and other acts of violence committed against the English by Tories over the winter of 1685/6: houses were broken into; livestock stolen or killed; and English farmers physically assaulted in broad daylight. In English eyes, all the Irish came to be tarnished by association. When Clarendon took up his position as Lord Lieutenant, he agreed that ‘the English could not but think themselves in great danger, when they were left exposed without any one weapon in their houses, and the Irish were all well armed’. His suggestion that some of the English be given their weapons back, however, came to nothing.³⁸

THE FIRST STEPS TOWARDS CATHOLICIZATION, 1685–6

It soon became apparent that James, despite his promises, was not going to continue ‘all things as they were’. Although he wanted to preserve the Act of Settlement, of which he himself had been a major beneficiary, he was determined to restructure the military and civil establishments. The army was to be remodelled, to ensure its loyalty, while he wanted Catholics to be admitted to the privy council, to serve as sheriffs, judges and JPs, and to be given ‘the same freedom and privileges in all corporations as his other subjects’ – seemingly in the belief (wildly mistaken, as it turned out) that there were ‘great numbers of wealthy Irish merchants abroad’ who would bring their wealth home ‘upon this encouragement’.³⁹

James had already convinced Charles II, shortly before the latter's death, of the need to reform the army in Ireland by bringing in Catholics ‘and making it a security for the King to trust against his other subjects’.⁴⁰ James proceeded to appoint a handful of Catholic officers upon his accession, among them the soon-to-be Earl of Tyrconnell, whom he sent over to Ireland with a list of sixty officers that were to be replaced. When Tyrconnell returned to England at the end of 1685 he convinced James that most Protestants in Ireland were Cromwellians and republican sympathizers and that the King could never be secure unless the army were ‘purged of that dross’. James responded by appointing Tyrconnell Lieutenant General of the army and sending him back to Ireland in May 1686 with a commission to inspect all the Irish regiments and replace all ‘unfit persons’. By the end of the summer about two-thirds of the army had been remodelled. Ostensibly, Tyrconnell's objective was to remove those who were disloyal or else unfit for military service (because too old or too short). In actuality, he set about dismissing Protestants and replacing them with Catholics. Whereas in 1685 the entirety of the Irish officer corps and the overwhelming majority of the rank and file had been Protestants of the Established Church, by 30 September 1686, 5,043 of the 7,485 privates (67 per cent) were Catholic; 166 out of 414 (40 per cent) of the officers; and 251 out of 765 (33 per cent) of the non-commissioned officers. At the same time, the Protestant chaplains were replaced by Catholic priests. James told Clarendon that he did not see that ‘employing some of the Catholic natives of the country’ did ‘any prejudice to what is the true English interest there, so long as the Act of Settlement is kept untouched’, which, the King affirmed, ‘it must always be’; nevertheless, since that settlement secured ‘many ill and disaffected people… in their possessions’, James continued, it was ‘the more necessary for me to secure myself and the Government against such… so that I must be sure of my troops’. However, many of the officers to whom Tyrconnell took exception were Cavaliers, experienced commanders with a long history of loyal service to the crown; there were, in fact, very few ex-Cromwellians left in the Irish army by 1685. Likewise Tyrconnell removed numerous ‘brave, lusty, young fellows’. The chief beneficiaries were the Old English, who were given the highest positions in the army; Tyrconnell had little time for the ‘O's and the Macs’, as he called the native Irish, although he did of necessity admit them into the lower ranks. The officers dismissed, who had often made large investments to secure their positions, naturally felt bitterly aggrieved; left with no means of support, a number found themselves ‘reduced with their families to beggary or extreme want’. Troopers found themselves being sent away without compensation for the horses or uniforms they themselves had paid for, or even the month's pay they were supposed to receive. Many of those discharged left the country. Most went to England, though a significant number went to Holland, where they joined with the Prince of Orange.⁴¹

The purge of the army was accompanied by changes in the civil administration. In April 1686 James replaced Lord Chancellor Archbishop Boyle with a creature of his own from England, Sir Charles Porter, albeit a Protestant, and removed three of the nine judges (one each from King's Bench, Common Pleas and the Exchequer) and replaced them with three Catholics – one from England, one of Old English stock in Ireland, the other of old Irish stock.⁴² In May he made twenty additions to the privy council, eleven of whom were Catholics, including Tyrconnell, the new judges and some other Catholic peers.⁴³ James also wanted Clarendon to appoint some Catholic sheriffs, but in fact Clarendon had already nominated sheriffs for the ensuing year that February, choosing in the main zealous Protestant loyalists – though there were a couple who, he said, came from Catholic or Irish backgrounds and were thought to be Catholic. Tyrconnell was furious and accused Clarendon of selecting Whigs and fanatics.⁴⁴ The King was able to insist, however, that Clarendon allow Catholics to be admitted to the corporations and even to hold office if duly elected. By the autumn, many Catholics had taken up their freedoms and some had been appointed magistrates, displacing Protestants removed to make way for them.⁴⁵ Catholic gentry were also put into the commissions of the peace: three of the McGorees were made JPs in County Fermanagh, four of the McMahons in County Monaghan, while nine Protestant JPs were superseded in County Limerick, ten in County Clare, and twenty-one in County Cork.⁴⁶

The legal impediment to the employment of Catholics within the military and civil administrations in Ireland was somewhat different from what it was in England. There was no equivalent in Ireland of the Test Act of 1673, requiring office-holders to be communicating members of the Established Church. The Elizabethan Act of Supremacy of 1560, however, which was still in force, did require all office-holders to take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance. With regard to the army, there had been numerous exemptions from the Elizabethan statute in the past, so the appointment of Catholics was hardly unprecedented, though the numbers were now of a different order from anything that had happened previously. In May 1685 the King simply instructed the lords justices to dispense the Catholic officers he had appointed from taking the oaths, and followed this in July by ordering that a general oath of fidelity should be the only oath administered to any of the officers or soldiers in the army or governors of forts and towns.⁴⁷

The appointment of Catholics to civil offices, however, proved much less straightforward. Clarendon, while a loyal servant of the crown, scrupled to do anything of dubious legal propriety. When Sunderland solicited his opinion in March 1686 about appointing Catholic sheriffs and JPs, Clarendon replied that he thought it would be a violation of the Act of Supremacy. He accepted that some Catholics had served as sheriffs or JPs before 1641, but they were generally from the English Pale; moreover, all the commissions he had seen had required the oath to be administered, so he was unclear how such appointments had been connived at.⁴⁸ Clarendon also raised objections to the King's dispensations to the three newly appointed Catholic judges, maintaining that this was the first time the oath of supremacy had ‘been dispensed with in a judicial place’ and was in breach of the law. He also thought it totally inappropriate that someone ‘of old Irish race’ should be a judge; his own research revealed ‘tthat none of the natives’ had ever been ‘allowed to be upon any of the benches, even before the difference in religion’.⁴⁹ With regard to the corporations, James informed Clarendon that he had been told that there was no law in Ireland excluding Catholics from being admitted freemen.⁵⁰ Yet the legal situation was not quite as clear cut as James had been led to believe. Although there was no equivalent of the English Corporation Act, many corporations had by-laws that required new freemen to take oaths of allegiance and supremacy and had regularly insisted on this requirement under Charles II.⁵¹ In the late spring of 1686 the Lord Mayor and aldermen of Dublin actually removed their recorder because he refused to take the oaths; Clarendon backed the corporation, but the recorder complained to Tyrconnell in London, who got him reinstated.⁵² Under pressure from London, Clarendon complied with the King's wishes and on 22 June sent a circular letter to the corporate towns instructing them to admit Catholics to their freedoms ‘without tendering the Oath of Supremacy’, adding that if any of these Catholics were subsequently elected to office their names should be forwarded to him so that he might dispense them from the oath.⁵³

It is undeniable that the king did possess a power to dispense with the law in certain circumstances. Yet he was only supposed to do so in cases of necessity, or when enforcing a law would create a blatant injustice. William King, writing after the Revolution, denied that any such necessity had existed under James II to justify dispensing with the oaths of supremacy and allegiance for office-holders, since ‘Protestants were numerous enough, and willing enough to serve him in every thing that was for the Interest of the Kingdom’. Although James had issued similar dispensations to Catholics ‘without any apparent Necessity’ in England, he went on, there things had been done ‘in some colour or form of Law, and many of them at least passed the Offices and Seals’. In Ireland, ‘they did not trouble them-selves with these Formalities. A verbal Command from the King was a sufficient Dispensation to all Laws made in favour of a Protestant.’⁵⁴ On the other side, it could be argued that excluding the vast majority of the population from the opportunity of serving their king was inequitable. Supporters of Tyrconnell's purge of the army maintained it was only fair to give some ‘poor Irish gentlemen… a share of the King's bread and bounty’, which had for so long been monopolized by English Protestants.⁵⁵ One tract argued that ‘it was both Politick and Reasonable, to give every Subject a possibility of sharing in the King's Favour, as he might deserve’.⁵⁶ James justified admitting Catholics to the corporations on the grounds that this would encourage trade and unite the affections of his subjects, whereas it was concerns about security that led him to Catholicize the army in Ireland, since he wanted to be sure of the loyalty of his own armed forces.⁵⁷

On the ecclesiastical front, James made a number of efforts to improve the position of the Catholic Church in Ireland. In March 1686 he instructed the sheriffs, JPs and the Protestant bishops ‘not to molest the Roman Catholic clergy in the exercise of their ecclesiastical functions amongst those of their own communion’; set up pensions for the titular Archbishop of Armagh and the rest of the Catholic bishops; and gave permission for the clergy to wear their clerical dress in public, with the exception of the pectoral cross. He also encouraged the regular clergy, particularly the Capuchins, ‘to settle and reside peaceably in all cities, towns and places’.⁵⁸ The Catholics jumped at the opportunities now afforded them. In mid-May, the Catholic clergy held a week-long convention in Dublin and decided, amongst other things, that they would ‘penly own and exercise their Episcopall Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction’ within Ireland.⁵⁹ Old mass houses began to be repaired and new ones erected.⁶⁰ Meanwhile, the Protestant Church was allowed to run down. James decided not to appoint successors to bishoprics and the lesser livings that fell vacant, instead keeping the revenues for the crown; ultimately, if only indirectly, the funds thus accrued went towards the payment of the Catholic clergy, ‘directly against the Laws and Constitution of the Kingdom’, as William King later protested.⁶¹ To silence potential criticism from the Protestant clergy, James issued directives in February 1686 forbidding them from meddling with matters of controversy or preaching against popery. On a number of occasions Clarendon found it necessary to rebuke indiscreet clergymen, among them the Bishop of Meath, and he even had to suspend two preachers for ‘impertinent’ sermons delivered before him in Dublin on Hallowe'en and Gunpowder Treason Day in 1686.⁶²

To many Catholics, who had been economically and politically marginalized for so long, the changes introduced in the first two years of James II's reign must have appeared welcome but modest. Service in the army could provide prestige for the Catholic gentry who acquired commissions and valuable new career opportunities for lower-class Irishmen who served in the rank and file, although Catholics still remained proportionately under-represented, given their percentage of the population as a whole. James's reforms had also resulted in Catholic merchants being placed on a more equal footing with Protestants, some degree of Catholic representation within the legal system, and the Catholic Church in Ireland achieving a quasi-official status. The biggest grievance, however, namely the land settlement, had remained unaddressed.

We need to recognize, however, that there were tensions within the Catholic community in Ireland. Many Irish Catholics looked forward to the day when they would regain control of their own country, be restored to their estates, and achieve the political, economic and religious rights so long denied them. As Clarendon's secretary, Sir Paul Rycaut, put it in July 1686: ‘the Irish talk of nothing now but recovering their land and bringing the English under their subjection’.⁶³ It was natural, therefore, that the Catholics in Ireland should look to the Catholic King as their ally. In August 1686, Dr Patrick Tyrrell, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Clogher and Kilmore, implored the King that ‘now that a needful Alteration [had] begun in Ireland, it should be carried on speedily’, assuring him that God would spare his ‘precious Life’ until he had accomplished ‘the glorious work’ of replanting the Catholic religion in his dominions.⁶⁴ At the same time, however, many Irish realized that their priorities were not the same as those of the King of England. Clarendon believed that there were many in Ireland who refused to accept the sovereignty of the English crown over their country. In December 1686 he informed his brother Rochester that ‘the generality’ of ‘the natives’ had been encouraged by their priests to believe ‘that this kingdom is the Pope's, and… that the King has no right, further than the Pope gives him authority’, and that it was therefore ‘lawful for them to call in any foreign power to help them against those who oppose the jurisdiction of the church’. The account written after the Revolution by Charles O'Kelly confirms that there were many Irish Catholics who wanted to promote their religion and their country's interests who found themselves at odds with James, believing him to be a weak prince who was too subservient to the interests of the English. However, there were more ‘sober’ Roman Catholics, particularly those who had purchased lands from the Cromwellian soldiers, Clarendon recognized, who had a vested interest in defending the status quo, and protested against ‘the violent proceedings here’, claiming to be as afraid as anyone else ‘of their countreymen's getting too much power’.⁶⁵

To Protestants, the negative implications of these initiatives were all that were visible. They were alarmed to see ‘the sword and administration of justice’ put into the hands not just ‘of a conquered people’ but even ‘the bloody Murtherers of Forty-one, and their Offspring’, and this despite the existence of laws incapacitating these men from bearing arms or holding office.⁶⁶ Fear about what the future might bring created a crisis of confidence for Protestant landlords and merchants, with serious knock-on effects for the economy. ⁶⁷ There were repeated reports of the scarcity of money and the deadness of trade. In July 1686 the Earl of Longford informed Ormonde that the unexpected changes in the civil administration and the army had caused such a general alarm, ‘that every man who has money pockets it up’, so that there was ‘no trading… in the country’ and ‘no possibility of receiving rents’.⁶⁸ Another correspondent reported in January 1687 that ‘the British off the wholle Easterne shoare of Ireland’ were sending their gold, silver and jewels to England, Scotland and Wales, because ‘they see the Cities, forts and the sword put into the hands of the Brothers, Cusins or Children of those that Murthered ther predecessors in '41’.⁶⁹ Some Protestant families decided to cut their losses and withdraw to England; Scots in the north - ‘many thousands’ according to one report – began to remove ‘with their whole families into Scotland’.⁷⁰ The emigration, at this stage, was in fact relatively small-scale, but even just a few leaving could have serious economic consequences. In May 1686, Clarendon told his brother about a wealthy Cork merchant who, until recently, ‘had forty looms at work’, and of a large landowner from Munster, who kept ‘500 families at work’, both of whom had now decided to sell up and go to England.⁷¹ The value of land fell. In September 1686 Petty calculated that rents had fallen by about one-third and that the lands of Ireland were worth about £8 million less than they had been three years earlier.⁷² Clarendon was worried about the adverse effect such developments were having on the Irish revenue. In fact, total receipts into the Irish treasury were higher in 1686 than they had been in any of the previous three years.⁷³ Nevertheless, when the receipts from customs and excise were analysed more closely, there appeared cause for concern. Customs received an artificial boost as a result of merchants calling in their effects from abroad. Thus, in the second quarter of 1686 they were up nearly £4,500 against the same quarter of 1685. However, that had been a time of rebellion in England and of temporary dislocation to trade, so the increase was nothing to boast about; the customs for the second quarter of 1686 were down by over £7,000 from what they had been in the comparable quarter of 1684. The excise experienced a straightforward drop; it fell by over £1,000 in the first quarter of 1686, and by the second quarter was nearly £2,300 down on what it had been in the same quarter the previous year.⁷⁴

If James's policy towards Ireland was intended to unite the interests of his subjects there, as he claimed, it was not succeeding. The moves towards Catholicization under Clarendon merely served to heighten tensions between the Catholic and Protestant, Irish and British (English and Scottish) populations. The Protestant inhabitants of Athlone, a garrison town on the frontier between the Pale and the Gaelic hinterland, staged several bonfires on 23 October 1685 to commemorate the anniversary of the Irish Rebellion, including a particularly impressive one at the Tholsell (or market house). There was plenty of ale for the assembled crowd and all the locals brought what fuel they could for the bonfire. A local shoemaker, Stephen Smith, donated a wooden block which he usually used for beating leather on and which he had long jokingly referred to as ‘the Fryer’. Some of the young men present decided to set a pair of beast's horns upon it (the symbol of a cuckold), as a joke, they later claimed, on ‘some younge marryed men then present’: the horns, it appears, were first turned towards one George West's door, because he ‘had been longe marryed and had noe Child’; West turned them towards Stephen Smith the younger, ‘merryly telling him that they would become him for a Coate of Armes’; Smith junior then turned them towards one Edward Proctor's house, saying ‘they would as well become him… as himselfe’. However, one William Ellis, known locally as ‘Wicked Will’, chimed in, saying that ‘the homes then on the said block lookt like one of the Pope's Bulls’, and proceeded to fire at the block, saying ‘he would shoote the Pope to the heart’; a number of others also fired shots, saying ‘they would Shute the Pope out of the Fryer's Gutts’. One of the active participants was a corporal in the local garrison. The precise truth behind the incident, however, is difficult to unravel. A couple of the key witnesses who gave evidence about the episode were men with Irish surnames, and the town sovereign, Peter Stern, reported that some of their evidence was shown to be false. Some of the participants denied that anyone had uttered ‘any reflecting words… of the Pope or any of his clergy’, claiming instead that they had fired shots into the air after toasting the King's health, although the examinations clearly reveal that some sort of anti-Catholic ritual had been staged. Stern could only conclude ‘what dangerous people this Place affords’.⁷⁵

The purges of the army, in particular, brought latent resentments to the surface. There were some skirmishes between new recruits and dismissed soldiers, and increasing reports of conflicts between Catholic troops and Protestant civilians. The people of Derry were said to be ‘strangely dejected and sad at the appearance’ of the new officers and troops sent to quarter in their town, who in turn were ‘so jealous of the inhabitants’, that they would not eat or drink anything they were given, ‘until their hosts taste[d] before them’.⁷⁶ The native Irish who flocked into Dublin to take up positions in the army – ‘strange wretches’, in the eyes of Clarendon, who could speak not a word of English – found themselves teased and heckled by the local youths. A violent clash occurred on 1 July 1686, allegedly at the instigation of ‘the Popish Officers’ who ‘bid the men beat any that jeered them’; one or two were reportedly killed in the scuffle.⁷⁷ Back in London, Roger Morrice heard rumours towards the end of the same month that animosities in Dublin were ‘so great’ that ‘two, or foure, or six a night’ were ‘frequently killed’.⁷⁸ In May of that year, a troop of Catholic dragoons quartered at Callan, County Kilkenny, broke into the house of a local minister, spoiling his goods and treating his children ‘barbarously’, while in Kilkenny itself there was trouble in early October, when Irish troops insulted a local nonconformist at his meeting-house. There was further unrest at Kilkenny on 23 October, as Catholic soldiers tried to disrupt the Protestant commemoration of the Irish Rebellion. One soldier took it upon himself to extinguish the bonfire that was burning outside the mayor's door, breaking the mayor's windows, and calling the mayor ‘a fanatic dog, and other very ill names’. A townsman who had constructed a bonfire outside his own house was similarly abused by a group of Irish troopers, who called him ‘fanatic rogue and dog’ and dragged him out of the house; in the scuffle, one of the soldier's guns accidentally went off, killing a fellow soldier. There were also reports of Irish soldiers trying to extinguish bonfires on 5 November.⁷⁹

Conflicts over quarters frequently erupted. William King later complained that the Catholic troops never paid a farthing for meat and drink, and that they extorted ‘vast Sums of Mony’ from Protestant innkeepers.⁸⁰ In January 1687 Morrice recorded that the ‘Soldiery in Ireland’ was ‘not only very burdensome, but grown terrible’, causing people to fear for their safety when travelling by road and ‘quitt their habitations’ in places where soldiers were quartered, since with the exception of Dublin, they were quartered in private as well as public houses.⁸¹ Even Tyrconnell recognized there were problems, and on 24 February 1687, shortly after having been installed as Lord Deputy, issued a proclamation insisting the army maintain proper discipline and pay for their quarters at the agreed rates.⁸² It had little effect. In April 1687, the soldiers in the Earl of Clancarty's regiment refused to pay a local innkeeper in Mallow, County Cork, for a horse seized for the use of one of the troopers; when he confronted them about what he was owed, they called him ‘a whigg’ and tossed him ‘soe long in a Blanket’ that he died the next day.⁸³

The degree of mutual enmity between Catholics and Protestants was reflected in various rumours of intended uprisings that began to spread in the autumn of 1686. They started in the counties of Waterford and Cork: ‘sometimes it was pretended, that the English would cut the throats of the Irish; and, sometimes, that the Irish would do the same to the English’. Clarendon had information brought to him ‘of great meetings in the night of armed men’, which caused such ‘great fears amongst the poor people’ that many left their homes and camped out in the fields. Army officers stationed in the area confirmed that no such meetings had ever taken place, and government directives to the local JPs to prosecute those people who maliciously spread such rumours helped quieten things down. Similar alarms soon began to be raised in other parts of the kingdom, however, particularly in the counties of Longford and Westmeath. Reports started circulating at the end of October of night meetings by the ‘Scotch and English’, who ‘had resolved to destroy all that came their way’, causing panic among both the ‘gentry and rabble’, who fled to the woods at night for fear of being massacred in their beds. The mobilization of local forces, to prevent any possible uprising, merely added to the tension. JPs ordered local constables to call out the watch, ‘for fear of Scots and disbanded soldiers, and others that were coming to destroy the Irish’, while army troops were also dispatched to keep the peace at night. One informant said that on the night of 29 October he saw 100 horsemen march in rank and file through the town of Mullingar, whom he and others believed were Presbyterians, ‘for honest men did not use to march in that manner, nor at that time in the night’. Another eyewitness concluded that these men must be Whigs, because ‘in Monmouth's time they did use to meet and march by night’. When one impatient army officer asked a third informant whether these horsemen had done any harm and was told ‘no’, he sarcastically replied: ‘Then they must be fairies.’ ‘That cannot be,’ retorted the Irishman, ‘for fairies are not seen by more than one man at a time.’ In Athlone, on the night of 10 November, the inhabitants were awoken from their sleep by the watch, who raised the alarm that a body of 100 horse and 300 men had been seen entering the town and that ‘they were all undone’. Clarendon concluded from his examination of the evidence that the troops reported to have been seen marching at night were none other than local troops dispatched to protect against any possibility of an uprising.⁸⁴

‘UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF A NATIVE-GOVERNOUR’, 1687–8

James had decided to replace Clarendon as head of the government in Ireland with Tyrconnell in the summer of 1686. It was not until January 1687, however, that Clarendon received official notification that he was to be recalled to England. Tyrconnell arrived to take up his post in early February, with the lesser title of Lord Deputy, though with all the powers of a Lord Lieutenant. ⁸⁵ The London Gazette did its best to promote Tyrconnell's appointment as popular within Ireland. His arrival in Dublin on 6 February, which coincided with the anniversary of the King's accession, was greeted, we are told, with great enthusiasm by ‘most of the Nobility and Persons of Quality’ and other inhabitants who expressed ‘their general Satisfaction by loud Acclamations as he passed through the Streets, by Ringing of Bells, and by Bonfires at Night throughout the City’. Pressure had been brought to bear, however, to ensure Tyrconnell was given an appropriate reception. The Lord Mayor had ordered the constables several days in advance to advise ‘the people’ that they ‘should make bonfires’; in fact, a number of constables took it upon themselves to warn people ‘to make none’, but Tyrconnell found out and complained to the Lord Mayor, who had them put in the stocks.⁸⁶ Clarendon handed over the sword of state to Tyrconnell on 12 February, in an official ceremony ‘attended by all the Nobility and Persons of Quality in Town’, the day concluding, according to the Gazette, ‘with all possible Demonstrations of Joy’.⁸⁷

Undoubtedly many amongst the Catholic community in Ireland did welcome Tyrconnell's appointment. One Catholic poet wrote of James's inspiration ‘… in giving Power / To brave Tirconnell in a happy hour’, adding they were ‘… blest with one in this auspicious day, / Who knows as well to Govern as Obey’.⁸⁸ Protestant opinion, however, was generally hostile. ‘Few or none of the Protestant gentry’, one account states, went to meet the new Lord Deputy when he landed at Dunleary on 6 February. The clergy of the Established Church were particularly alarmed, and began to talk ‘as if… they should be immediately turned out’, though the rumours that some of the students of Trinity College were plotting to murder Tyrconnell when he arrived appear to have been without substance.⁸⁹ Tyrconnell was sufficiently worried by reports that he intended to govern ‘otherwise than by the known law of this land’ – apparently spread by ‘several disaffected persons’ and ‘some few fiery Spirits in the Pulpits’ – to issue a proclamation on 21 February promising to protect ‘all His Majesties Subjects… of what Perswasion in Religion or Degree… in their just Rights and Properties due to them by Law, and in the free Exercise of their Religion’, so long as they remained loyal to the King. The proclamation was intended not just for those in Ireland, but also to calm the fears of Protestants in England and Scotland, where it was also published.⁹⁰ Such gestures did not prove particularly reassuring. On that same day, a Protestant from Cork wrote, ‘our great man is Arrived but god knows what he will doe with us’, and reported how the Protestants were ‘dayly threatned by the ordinary people [that is, the local Catholics] that theay will have all’. As a result, he said, there was no money to be got for anything, people were beginning to stop trading, and many had sent what plate or gold they had to England, predicting that before spring many tenants would give up their land.⁹¹

It was following Tyrconnell's appointment as Lord Deputy that the English Whig Thomas Wharton (whose family owned land in counties Carlow and Westmeath) composed his famous verse satire ‘Lilliburlero’. Written to imitate the way the Irish sounded (at least to English ears), and sung to a catchy traditional melody (similar to ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’), it opened with the lines:

Ho, brother Teague, dost hear de decree,
Lilli burlero bullen a-la;
Dat we shall have a new debittie.
Lilli burlero bullen a-la.

Subsequent stanzas warned ominously ‘Ho, by my shoul, it is a Talbot/ And he will cut de Englishman's troat’ and ‘Now, now, de heretics all go down, / By Chreist and St Patrick, the nation's our own!’ Finally published in London in October 1688, it was to play an important role in swaying public opinion in England at the time of William of Orange's invasion.⁹²

Upon assuming the reins of government, Tyrconnell told the privy council the King had ordered him to maintain the laws regarding civil and ecclesiastical matters and promised he would see they were put into execution.⁹³ Nevertheless, under his lord deputyship the policy of Catholicization picked up speed. Most of the remaining Protestants were removed from the army; by the autumn of 1688 90 per cent of the army was Catholic.⁹⁴ The most dramatic changes came in the civil administration. Only the revenue commission remained relatively unscathed. The Catholic convert Thomas Sheridan was appointed First Commissioner of the Revenue, but the need to keep experienced men in office, coupled with concern about the adverse effects that rumours of possible displacements might have on the revenue, led Sheridan to issue a circular letter confirming that no one would be put either in or out on account of his religion. The judiciary was another matter. The Protestant Porter was replaced as Lord Chancellor by the Catholic Alexander Fitton, and three more Catholic judges appointed in the place of Protestant ones, so that the Catholics now outnumbered Protestants by two to one on each bench. The Gaelic poet David Ó Bruadair rejoiced that the Irish Catholics on the bench could now give justice to the natives, and ‘listen to the plea of the man who can't speak / The lip-dry and simpering English tongue’.⁹⁵ More Catholics were added to the privy council, while in all counties except one the Protestant sheriffs were turned out and Catholics appointed in their stead. Even the survival of the single Protestant – Charles Hamilton of Cavan – was a mistake, the man being confused with a Catholic of the same last name. Since sheriffs were responsible for impanelling juries, they could ensure that juries would now also be composed of Catholics.⁹⁶

The Catholic domination of the legal system led Protestants to complain that it was impossible for them to get justice at law.⁹⁷ (Now they knew how the Catholics had felt, when the legal system had been dominated by Protestants.) Protestant landlords found the courts were unlikely to support their attempts to sue for arrears of rent, while Catholic tenants, egged on by the clergy, increasingly began to withhold payment, knowing they could get away with it.⁹⁸ One Dublin Protestant wrote in December 1687 that it was ‘ill for any that have controversys at Law, the Courts and Innes favouring one side now, as much as heretofore they did the other’.⁹⁹ William King later protested that ‘for Two Years before the Revolution in England, very few received any profit out of their Estates’.¹⁰⁰ Under Tyrconnell, ‘if the least flaw could be found in a Protestant's Title to an Estate’, one Protestant pamphleteer complained, Catholics would dispute the claim at court and invariably get a decision in their favour.¹⁰¹ The bias of juries towards fellow Catholics or native Irish allegedly extended to even the most barbaric of crimes. In the summer of 1687, a jury in Antrim acquitted ‘three great Rogues’ accused of burglary and of cutting out the tongue of their victim to stop him from talking, ‘against full evidence and the positive direction of both the judges’.¹⁰²

Tyrconnell also gave further encouragement to the practice of the Catholic faith. He made a clear statement of his own position on 13 February, the first Sunday after his being sworn into office, when he arranged for a French Catholic priest to preach a sermon, in French, before him and the rest of his government at the Jesuits' church in Dublin. To Protestants, this was a sign of Tyrconnell's ‘inclinations for the interest of France’.¹⁰³ Two days later, according to a local Protestant diarist, he heard a sermon which took for its text Numbers 33, v. 55, God's speech to Moses in the plains of Moab as the Children of Israel were about to enter the Holy Land: ‘if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell’.¹⁰⁴ Tyrconnell took over the chapel in Dublin castle for Catholic worship, and also that in the new hospital at Kilmainham on the outskirts of Dublin, despite the fact that Clarendon had hastily arranged for the latter to be consecrated before his departure, in an attempt to prevent it from falling into Catholic hands. Henceforth, the retired soldiers, for whom the hospital had been built, were forced to hold their religious services in the dining hall. Protestants in Dublin began to fear that all their churches would be taken away from them. Some local wit affixed a notice to the door of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin announcing banns of matrimony between that church and the see of Rome, ‘bidding any that could, forthwith to shew cause why they should not be joined together’.¹⁰⁵

Although James did not issue his English Declaration of Indulgence of April 1687 in Ireland, he nevertheless extended liberty of conscience to his western kingdom that spring; the only restriction was that he forbade large numbers of people from meeting at night and anyone preaching ‘against his person or government’.¹⁰⁶ With full liberty now established, Catholic religious orders openly flourished. According to William King, the priests and friars built about fourteen chapels and convents in Dublin, and set up two nunneries.¹⁰⁷ Within the diocese of Cashel, Dominicans, Franciscans and Jesuits all kept their own schools and public chapels. More controversially, when the Dean of Derry, Peter Manby, announced his conversion to Catholicism in 1687, James issued a dispensation allowing him to continue to hold his deanship. There was also an attack on Protestant educational institutions. Trinity College successfully resisted an attempt to force it to admit a Catholic convert to a fellowship, though more by luck than anything else. The College statutes did, in fact, contain a clause granting the king the power to dispense with the said statutes, and the man in question - Bernard Doyle - was given a royal dispensation. Someone had not done their homework, however, since the dispensation still required Doyle to take the oath of a fellow, which included the oath of supremacy, and even the Catholic judges recognized ‘the insufficiency of his Dispensation’. The government was rather more successful in undermining Protestant schools. Under the terms of an Elizabethan statute of 1570, the chief governor of Ireland was responsible for appointing qualified schoolmasters in all but four dioceses. In direct contravention of this act, Tyrconnell failed to supply positions as they fell vacant. Jesuits were allowed to set up Catholic schools in opposition to Protestant ones, and finally in June 1688, in a bold initiative that was certainly against existing law, James gave orders for vacancies in government-sponsored schools to be filled by Jesuits.¹⁰⁸

The Catholic religious revival generated increasing tensions between Catholics and the Protestant minority. The Irish-language literati praised James II and Tyrconnell for their efforts in bringing relief to the suffering Catholics of Ireland and rejoiced at the reversal of Protestant fortunes.¹⁰⁹ Ó Bruadair championed James II as the ‘Light of our Church… The first King of England who gave rank and dignity… / To Irishmen after the risk they encountered / Conduct that freed them from tyranny’, and concluded that James ‘hath changed our despondent hopes’.¹¹⁰ In a mood of rising Catholic triumphalism, the Catholic clergy began to forbid their congregations to pay tithes and other dues to Protestant ministers, under pain of excommunication. Following a petition from the Protestant bishops, Tyrconnell and the Irish council did issue orders to the judges in June 1687, instructing them to command people to pay all church dues as formerly.¹¹¹ In practice, however, Protestant ministers found it very difficult to secure redress through a legal system that was now dominated by Catholics; if writs were obtained against those who refused to pay tithes, Protestants complained, the Catholic sheriffs would simply refuse to execute them.¹¹² There were growing signs of conflict within the parishes. At Barrettstown, County Kildare, in early October 1687, seven men armed with poles and pitchforks tried to prevent the burial of a corpse on the south side of the chapel yard on the grounds that the dead man ‘was an Englishman’.¹¹³ In Drogheda, on 30 January 1688, the Catholic clergy were bold enough to hold a funeral for the late Catholic mayor in the Protestant church of St Peter's. The ceremony started with a ‘Solemne Procession’ of the regular clergy ‘in their Respective habitts, together with severall Jesuitts, and the Titular primate… through the publique streets’ who carried a large cross before them, ‘singing as they went, and Guarded on each side with a Considerable party of Musquetiers’. The musketeers then kept guard at the great west door to keep out unwanted intruders, while the clergy held the service in the church before the assembled congregation. The local vicar was outraged at such ‘a publique Violation of the lawes of this Kingdom’ and ‘an open Invasion’ of his right and freehold.¹¹⁴

Tyrconnell's main ambition was to modify the land settlement. Some action certainly needed to be taken. All but the most uncompromising of Protestants could appreciate that there had been injustices, while repeated speculation that the settlement was to be altered had created a destabilized environment and produced an adverse knock-on effect on the Irish economy. Clarendon, when Lord Lieutenant, had wanted to issue a commission of grace, whereby those currently in possession of land could, for a fee, confirm their titles, allowing the King to use the money thereby raised to relieve those Catholics whose cases he thought worthy of his compassion. However, Clarendon had also warned that any attempt to undo the settlement would alienate not only Protestant opinion but also those Catholic proprietors in Ireland who had either regained their lands at the Restoration or else purchased new lands from Cromwellian adventurers since then.¹¹⁵ James recognized that it was necessary to do something ‘to settle the minds of people in Ireland, by freeing them from any apprehensions they may have of a design to break the Acts of Settlement and Explanation’, but thought that more money could be raised to compensate dissatisfied Catholic claimants through a parliament than a commission of grace.¹¹⁶ Tyrconnell also did not like Clarendon's scheme, and was already putting his own plans in place long before he was officially to take over as Lord Deputy himself. Thus in August 1686 he brought over to England the Catholic barrister Sir Richard Nagle, with the aim of convincing James to call a parliament to modify the settlement, restore the ancient proprietors, and raise money to compensate those English landowners who would thereby be dispossessed.¹¹⁷ James agreed that preparations should be made for the calling of a parliament in Ireland, but decided that it should not meet until after he had met with his parliament in England.

In a conversation with Nagle in October 1686, Sunderland suggested it would be a good idea to issue a proclamation when the change of governors in Ireland took place confirming that the King had no intention of breaking the Act of Settlement, in order to settle the minds of the people and prevent a potential depopulation of the country. Nagle disagreed, and decided to express his disagreement in a letter, ostensibly addressed to Tyrconnell in London, which he penned from Coventry on 26 October as he was making his way back to Ireland. Sunderland's argument that fears and jealousies would occasion a depopulation of the country if such a proclamation were not issued was fallacious, Nagle insisted: those with estates were not selling up and leaving, whereas the Protestant traders did not possess land, so confirming the settlement would not affect them. On the other hand, a proclamation confirming the land settlement would, Nagle continued, dishearten the dispossessed Catholics, who would see no hope of getting their lands restored, and even the Catholic merchants, who recognized that the only hope Catholics could have of achieving security for their religion and property under an eventual Protestant successor was ‘to make the Catholics there considerable in their fortunes’. Thus, it would be the issuing of such a proclamation that would ‘tend to the dispeopling of the country, to the discouragement of trade, and to the disheartening of the Catholics of that country’, who were, after all, ‘the greatest part of that kingdom’. Whoeover confirmed that present settlement, Nagle continued, would take ‘upon himself the guilt of what was already transacted’. It was inconceivable that James, ‘a Prince of great piety’, would allow ‘all Innocents that never were heard’ to ‘be condemned, and their estates taken away from them, contrary to… Magna Charta’, or so order matters that those who had spilt their blood fighting for the crown against Cromwell, and who had been promised their estates by Charles II, ‘should for ever be barred of their ancient rights’, and ‘their estates… confirmed to those who served the Usurper’.¹¹⁸

The ‘Coventry Letter’ was clearly intended for public consumption; Clarendon received his copy on 4 January, and recorded in his diary that it showed ‘plainly what is designed to be done in this country’.¹¹⁹ In April 1687 Petty learned how ‘The “Coventry Letter” runns now about in every hand’ in Ireland, ‘and gives terrour’.¹²⁰ The Protestant community in Ireland were understandably alarmed. Petty himself, who held estates in County Kerry, penned a reply defending the land settlement as just, since the king had the right to dispose of lands forfeited by rebels and the Act of Settlement had been passed by an Irish parliament ‘out of which no man was Excluded for being a Roman Catholique’ –Catholics had also been allowed to vote in the general election – and that the proprietors who proved their innocence were for the most part restored to their lands without suit at law, and found them in a much better condition than when they lost them. Besides, ‘the Irish Nation… had no reason to complaine’, Petty said, since they were ‘equally protected by the Lawes’; had ‘the free exercise of their religion… connived att’ while dissenting Protestants, especially in Ulster, were ‘severely prosecuted’; and had been allowed to trade in corporations and sit on juries.¹²¹ Another reply, dated 15 November 1686 and supposedly penned by an English Catholic, warned that since in the three kingdoms as a whole Protestants greatly outnumbered Catholics, it was important not to provoke them while the Catholics in England were trying to procure relief from the penal laws and secure a better position for themselves – especially given that it was likely (as it still seemed at the time) that James would be succeeded by a Protestant. Many of the forfeited lands, this author pointed out, had ended up in the possession not of parliamentarians or Cromwellians but of ‘the best of his Majestie's protestant subjects’ of the Established Church, and quite a few had gone to James II himself, while it was believed in England that the restored Catholics had got more by the settlement ‘than was formerly their own’. ‘What allarme will it make in this Kingdome [England]’, the author asked, ‘when laws of property are overthrown in that?’; ‘it is beginning at the wrong end to resolve things on that side without first haveing made sure work on this and even the noyse and all rumours from thence might blast and prejudice things here of much higher value and importance’.¹²²

James next set about trying to ensure that, should he decide to call a parliament in Ireland, it would be one inclined to his interest. This was part of what turned out to be a three-pronged strategy across all his kingdoms to secure a pliant legislature. Only in Ireland, however, was the success of the strategy eventually put to the test: in England and Scotland, James's efforts were foiled by William's invasion; Ireland, which became James's base for his attempts to regain his lost crowns from William after the Glorious Revolution, was, by contrast, to see the calling of a parliament in 1689 along the lines that James had envisaged. In the first half of 1687 James reversed the outlawries against eleven Irish lords, in order to increase Catholic representation in the upper House.¹²³ To guarantee control over the composition of the Commons, he instructed Tyrconnell, on taking up the lord deputyship, to remodel the corporations.¹²⁴ Tyrconnell dutifully summoned all corporate towns and incorporated bodies to surrender their charters, ostensibly so that their privileges could be enlarged, though he made no secret of the fact that the real reason was because too many corporations had sought to frustrate the King's design of admitting Catholics as freemen or to corporate office.¹²⁵ The Lord Deputy did his best to convince the Protestant Irish that admitting Catholics to the corporations would offer ‘no damage to their Religion’, which ‘he would in no manner intrench upon’, but only be of ‘advantage… to their temporal concerns’, since by uniting people in ‘their affections’ it would prove ‘a mighty encouragement to trade’.¹²⁶ A few corporations voluntarily surrendered, such as the town of Drogheda and the surgeons of Dublin, while the natives of the town of Galway took pride in ‘being the most forward of the whole Kingdom’ in having ‘the first Popish Mayor and Sheriffs, and Common-Councilmen, and other Officers’.¹²⁷ Most decided to put up a fight. The government retaliated with writs of quo warranto: by June 1687 it had initiated quo warranto proceedings against Dublin and 104 other corporations in Ireland.¹²⁸ On 1 April, the Lord Mayor, sheriffs and citizens of Dublin petitioned the King, insisting that they had made concessions to Catholics, maintaining they had always been loyal to the crown, and protesting that ‘the public good’ would suffer if their charter and liberties were either surrendered or evicted. Three days later the city assembly formally repealed all their acts which entailed disqualifications on Catholics. It was all to no avail. The case went to trial, where it was determined that the city had forfeited its charter, and a new one was granted at the end of November. Derry similarly put up a great battle, but it too was at last forced to forfeit its charter.¹²⁹

The quo warrantos did not result in the removal of all Protestants from the corporations; the general pattern was to leave about ‘one third Protestants and two thirds Papists’.¹³⁰ In Dublin, for example, the new Lord Mayor and sheriffs were Catholics, but fifteen of the forty-eight burgesses were Protestants, as were ten of the twenty-four aldermen. Some of the Protestants who were allowed to serve on the remodelled corporations, however, were nonconformists. In Belfast, the Presbyterian merchant Thomas Pottinger was named town sovereign. In Dublin, the Quakers Samuel Claridge and Anthony Sharp became aldermen, together with two other nonconformists. Quakers were also named as masters of the corporation of weavers and of the new corporation of hosiers. Quakers were particularly resented, because they were happy to take advantage of the benefits of the corporation but refused to serve ‘in any office’ that admitted ‘the least trouble or charge’, as the corporation of Youghall had complained back in July 1686. ‘The peaceable Quakers, who before would not under a Protestant Government take upon them so much as the Office of a Constable’, one Protestant tract quipped, ‘now under a Popish every where readily conform.’ Another Protestant pamphleteer protested in 1689 that some of the Protestant nonconformists intruded into the corporations ‘were as irreconcileable Enemies to the Protestant Church, as they were Friends to, and Confederates with the Romish’, especially the Quakers who, this author claimed, derived their ‘ridiculous Profession… from the Jesuits’. Under such circumstances, not all conformist Protestants who survived the purge agreed to serve. In Dublin, for example, eleven of the Protestant burgesses refused to take their seats.¹³¹

The battle over the corporations, however, reveals that Tyrconnell's agenda for Ireland was somewhat at odds with the imperial pretensions of the English crown. James wanted not just to help his co-religionists but also to enhance the authority of the crown, and he therefore insisted that a clause be put into the new charters giving the king's chief governor the power to remove or appoint whom he pleased.¹³² Tyrconnell objected, and tried to persuade James to make the new charters unalterable, though with no success. Tyrconnell wanted to give the Irish corporations more control over their own affairs and free them from interference by the government in England; since there was at this time (spring 1687) still no prospect of a Catholic successor to James, James's clause would enable a future Protestant king of England to undo all the changes that had been introduced during James's reign.¹³³ Tyrconnell also sought to promote the economic interests of the trading communities in Ireland by issuing an order to repeal the duty on iron, which he knew would bring Spanish coin into the country. The government in England, however, had no desire to allow the Irish to set themselves up in competition with English commercial interests and forced him to back down, on the grounds that his proposal was contrary to statues passed in England, which took precedence under Poynings’ Law.¹³⁴ Frustrated in these efforts, Tyrconnell allegedly declared to the Irish council that he would get the forthcoming Irish parliament ‘to expunge’ the clause inserted in the new charters to which he had objected, repeal Poynings' Law, and allow the export of wool into France and the importation of tobacco and other plantation commodities into Ireland, ‘without unlading first in England’, as required by the Navigation Act. He continued with a threat that ‘unless the King would consent to all these things, as well as to an alteration of the Irish Act of Settlement, they should not pass no money bills’.¹³⁵

With the corporations in safe hands, the election of a parliament sympathetic to Catholic interests could be guaranteed. Now all Tyrconnell needed to do was to persuade James to reopen the question of the land settlement. His chance came in August 1687, when the King, who was then on his own electoral tour through England, summoned him to Chester for a general discussion of English and Irish affairs. Tyrconnell managed to convince James that some alteration of the Act of Settlement was necessary; Sheridan, who accompanied Tyrconnell on the trip, went further and suggested that the Act needed to be broken entirely and a new one set up. James ordered them to draw up two draft bills for his consideration. Two Catholic judges, Thomas Nugent and Thomas Rice, came to England in February 1688 with the proposals. One involved opening up the whole question of the settlement again, by allowing those claims for innocency that had never been heard to be granted a hearing. The other simply proposed that the estates of the Cromwellians should be equally divided between the new owners and the old. The schemes were rejected by the English privy council, and met staunch opposition from English Catholics, who were worried about the implications for their own position in England if such radical measures were pursued in Ireland. Lord Belasyse said that if such designs were encouraged, the English Catholics would have to look for another country. Lord Powis similarly maintained ‘that the King had better use to make of his Catholick Subjects in England, than to Sacrifice them for reprize to the Protestants of Ireland in lieu of their Estates there’. Londoners also let the judges know how they felt about the proposals. Whenever Nugent and Rice travelled through the streets of the capital, crowds of youths would run after their coach, ‘with Potatoes stuck on sticks’, shouting ‘Make room for the Irish Embassadors’. The crowds appear to have been stirred up by Catholics within the English government, who were desperate to make the King realize to ‘what mischief’ the proposals would lead.¹³⁶

Tyrconnell's administration inevitably had the effect of alienating Protestant opinion in Ireland even further. More Protestants decided it was time to leave when Tyrconnell was appointed Lord Deputy. According to one account, some 1,500 families deserted Dublin when Clarendon was removed from office, ‘to avoid the Tyranny of him that was to follow’.¹³⁷ Sheridan alleged that Tyrconnell's ‘over hasty making all Catholic sheriffs and issuing out quo warrantos against the Corporation Charters’, coupled with the fact that ‘the Catholic natives indiscreetly’ began ‘giving out they were soon to be restored… to their ancient possessions’ and were ‘to engross all the civil as well as military employments’, so alarmed the Protestants that ‘vast numbers of all sorts, gentlemen, artificers, tradesmen and merchants as well as the disbanded officers of the army quit the kingdom, apprehending a bloody persecution and the breaking of the Act of Settlement’.¹³⁸ Sources hostile to Tyrconnell, it has to be said, give a somewhat exaggerated impression of how many Protestants fled the country. Some Protestants found it difficult to sell up and leave, with land prices being driven down, while there were also ‘great multitudes’ with little or no money who had no option but to stay put.¹³⁹ In fact, probably no more than 5 per cent of the Protestant population left Ireland during James II's reign. Certain areas, however, were affected much more than others: Dublin lost 25 per cent of its Protestant population; Cork 16 per cent. Moreover, it was the economically most important classes who left, namely the landlords and merchants.¹⁴⁰ Those who stayed were clearly not happy. Trouble seemed to be brewing in the north, where radical Presbyterians who had come over from the Scottish south-west were supposedly trying to foment discontent. In the summer of 1687, Tyrconnell received a report that ‘above 4,000 Scotch fanatics, many of them besides the preacher come from Scotland, had a meeting for several days in Ulster, and discoursed many things tending to sedition and rebellion’; the preacher was arrested and sent back to Scotland, though he subsequently escaped to Holland.¹⁴¹

The economic consequences of an unsettled Ireland were worrying. Sheridan, no friend to the Lord Deputy, alleged that the sudden change of affairs in Ireland during Tyrconnell's period of office ‘proved a great stop and discouragement to the trade and improvement of the kingdom, both in cities, towns and country’.¹⁴² Hostile accounts written in 1689 tended to express their criticisms in hyperbolic terms. One pamphleteer asserted that ‘the infinite numbers of people deserting the Kingdom from all parts of it upon Tyrconnell's coming to the Government made the Towns and Cities almost waste; discouraged all manner of Trade, and sunk the Revenue to an incredible Ebb, and deduction from its former Value’.¹⁴³ The economic downturn was real enough. Petty calculated that the value of lands in Ireland in 1687 was little more than one half of what they had been in 1683, and the value of cattle and stock only about three-quarters. The price of butter, cheese, milk, eggs and meat all began to fall. Urban trade was also hit. Among other things, the flight to England of so many from Dublin led to a significant downturn in the consumption of beer. As a result, by August 1687 the Dublin excise was down one-seventh from what it had been the previous quarter, which was already below normal; the customs of Dublin fell even further, by one-quarter.¹⁴⁴ The Irish revenue as a whole fell by almost £30,000, from £334,576 in 1686 to £305,985 in 1687.¹⁴⁵ Protestants complained that Catholics refused to do business with them, or purchase things in Protestants' shops.¹⁴⁶ Yet it was not only the Protestants who suffered; ‘the Trading part of the Papists’ also felt the effects of this ‘general Consumption of Trade’, while ‘the Countrey-man, tho pleas'd with the restoration of his holy father’, nevertheless complained that ‘the times [were] worse’ and that he would ‘bee undone’.¹⁴⁷

Other factors affected the Irish economy. Bad weather, coupled with French duties on wool and butter, led to a near collapse of Ireland's two staples, leading one Cork Protestant to predict in June 1688, ‘this Country will Infallibly be Begard’.¹⁴⁸ Economic dislocation brought with it increased crime, more theft, and more rural violence, much of it directed against Protestants, if only because they were the ones with more wealth.¹⁴⁹ Several sources attest to a rise in sectarian violence. At the beginning of 1687 there were reports of ‘Several Murthers… Comited upon the brittish in many places’, including a brutal incident that had allegedly happened at a house about eight miles outside Dublin, where a family of seven was killed, the father and son having ‘ther bellyes ript upp’ and the mother and four daughters ‘Burnt in there beds’.¹⁵⁰ In Dublin on 23 October that year, Protestant celebrations on the anniversary of the Irish Rebellion were disrupted by ‘a rabble of Popish soldiers with drawn swords and crowd of other rabble’ who ran about the town trying to extinguish the bonfires. Violent scuffles ensued, which led to several people being wounded and two Protestant tradesmen being killed; one of them was killed outside his own door by a Catholic who allegedly boasted that ‘he was sorry he did not kill twenty more’. Some accounts allege that as many as five Protestants and two or three Catholics were killed.¹⁵¹ To prevent similar trouble on 5 November, Tyrconnell issued a proclamation forbidding unauthorized public bonfires on festival days.¹⁵² In the face of such violence from certain sections of the Catholic community, and with control of the agencies of law enforcement and the army firmly in Catholic hands, rumours began to spread in some communities that ‘a general Massacre [was] to be suddainly put in Execution’ on the Protestants.¹⁵³ A Dublin Protestant recorded the dire situation in April 1688: ‘The Country here is very poor; so many families being removed with their effects, and dayly going, because of the Irish army; from whence we can expect nothing but a massacre in case the King should dye.’ ‘The uncertainty of the titles of land’, he continued, made men ‘keep all the money by them they can get’ and send all their plate to England, while ‘Our Church here stands totteringly… there being great expectations that a Parliament here will transfer all, or a good part, to their own clergy’. Ominously, he concluded that ‘The Irish have many prophecies of this year 1688, and are in great expectations of the fulfilling them.’¹⁵⁴

CONCLUSION

The policy of Catholicization pursued by James and Tyrconnell in Ireland destroyed the fragile equilibrium that had been established during the reign of Charles II. Yet the problems that developed during the period 1685–8 reveal not just the errors or misguided initiatives of the men in charge; they also highlight the inherent instabilities in the Restoration Irish polity and the fundamental structural problems that made a long-lasting, working solution to the governance of Ireland so difficult to achieve. Merely the accession of a new king, and the expectations or anxieties this created, destabilized the situation and revealed the deep-seated tensions and mutual antagonisms that existed within Ireland. Because it was James's and Tyrconnell's decision to promote the interests of the Catholics in Ireland that was the apparent cause of the rapid destabilization of Irish affairs, it might seem that the Irish problem at this time was essentially religious in nature. Certainly religious factors were highly important. But the Irish problem was always about much more than simply religion. It was also about access to political and economic power, to trading privileges or land, to justice at law; it was about the nature of the relationship between England and Ireland, and the extent to which the latter should be treated as a colonial dependency of the former; it was about whose country it was and who should be in charge. It is true that these issues tended to reinforce the confessional divide, since by and large the Protestants were the ones with the power and the Catholics the ones who were dispossessed. But they did not invariably so do. Thus we have seen that there were divisions within Protestant ranks, and that some nonconformists even served on some of the purged corporations with Catholics following the quo warranto proceedings. In addition, there were divisions within the Catholic interest in Ireland, between the Old English and the Gaelic Irish, and also between those Catholics who had been restored to their estates at the Restoration and those who had not (a division, that is, mainly within the Old English community itself).

There was a tendency among those engaged in the struggle against English hegemony to perceive the conflict in national terms – as a struggle to throw off English colonial domination and achieve autonomy and self-determination for the Irish nation. As we have noted, there was frequent bragging by the Irish during James II's reign that they were soon to have their day, recover their lands, and bring ‘the English under their subjection’.¹⁵⁵ According to O'Kelly, writing after the Revolution, Tyrconnell's reforms had made him ‘the Darling of the Nation’.¹⁵⁶ The concept of the Irish ‘us’, however, tended by now to be used to refer to all those who had lost out at the hands of the English or British ‘them’ – that is, not just the Gaelic Irish themselves, but also the Catholics of Old English stock. The author of another retrospective history, written in the early eighteenth century from the perspective of the Old English, conceived of ‘the nation of Ireland’ as equivalent to the Catholics of Ireland, whether of Old English or Gaelic Irish stock.¹⁵⁷ The sense that there was a basic conflict between Ireland and England, the Irish ‘us’ and the English or British ‘them’, is brought out in a contemporary vindication of Tyrconnell's government of Ireland that appeared during the course of 1688. The pamphlet began with a bold assertion of the author's opinion that Ireland was more likely to thrive ‘under the Influence of a Native-Governour, than under any Stranger to us and our Country’. By contrast, ‘a Man altogether of English Interest, never did, and likely never will… project any thing for us, which may tend to our Advantage, that may be the least bar or prejudice to the Trade of England; which is the only Nation in the World that impedes our Trade’. ‘Former Governours’ had ‘brought over as many Strangers to us, as lick'd up all the Imployments in Church and State… to the Grief of the whole Nation’. The author conceded that Ireland consisted of ‘divers Interests’, but then went on to posit the existence of a basic dichotomy between ‘The Irish’, who were pleased that they were ‘under the Government of a Native’ who had removed ‘all Jealousies of Inequality from them’, and ‘the British’, who had no reason to feel insecure, given Tyrconnell's ‘Education’, the ‘stake he has in England’, and the fact that he had an English wife and was himself ‘descended from a Famous Ancient Stock of English Nobility’. The fact that Tyrconnell was a native and Irish (albeit of Old English stock) was more important than the fact that he was Catholic, ‘because a Stranger may have that Qualification’. As far as this author was concerned, the issue was at heart about the Irish having control over their own affairs, so that their interests would not be continually sacrificed to those of England.¹⁵⁸

The ripostes to the Vindication show that the English saw the Irish situation in similar ‘us’ versus ‘them’ terms. Thus one pamphleteer wrote that ever since the original conquest of Ireland, it had always been a maxim that an Englishman should be chief governor of Ireland; if this was so before the Reformation, how much more necessary it was now that there was a religious divide. Ireland was ‘a conquer'd Country’, and ‘the Conquerors have a right to establish Laws… as shall seem fitting and convenient towards the keeping of it in their hands’. The British in Ireland wanted Ireland to be ruled by an Englishman, and ‘the ill effects the contrary method’ had had ‘on their Persons and Estates’ were ‘but too visible’. The author tried to claim that it was better for the natives to be under English government, arguing that they were ‘beholding to us for reducing them from a state of Barbarity, which left but little difference between them and Brutes’, since ‘We taught them to Live, to Eat, Drink, and Lodge like humane Creatures’, and they also had the benefit of ‘the gentleness of the English Government’ and ‘the equal Protection of the Laws’. The author of the Vindication of Tyrconnell, he continued, in reality wanted Ireland to be ‘an independent Kingdom, and in the hands of its own Natives: he longs till the day, when the English Yoak of Bondage shall be thrown off’.¹⁵⁹

A manuscript reply to the Vindication made the similar point that the English conquerors should not be under the government of the Irish conquered, and warned that history demonstrated that the Irish were ‘the veterane and Irreconcilable Enimies of the English’. The attempt to construct a rational argument about the loyalty of the British, the rebelliousness of the Irish, and the fact the Irish had little to complain about under English rule (since they were always allowed liberty of conscience) was mixed with recourse to crude anti-Irish prejudice. Thus, the author castigated the alleged contradictory arguments of the Vindication as ‘Excellent Irish Logick’. Similarly, in explaining the economic misfortunes that he saw as having befallen Ireland since the English had been disarmed and subjected to rule by the Irish, he asserted that ‘the Irish’ were ‘knowne generally’ to be ‘a slothfull and Idle people haveing as little Industry or ingenuity to improve their labour to an advantage of themselves and families’, and consequently, now Ireland had been deprived of English improvements, the countryside and cities were swarming with beggars.¹⁶⁰ Mutual antagonisms clearly ran deep; the situation in Ireland by 1688 was already highly volatile.

3

‘That unhappy Island of Ireland’