Cromwell' repression of Ireland
At the death of Charles Ist, the English government is dominated by Oliver Cromwell[1], a Puritan fiercely opposed to the “papists”. At Westminster, in March 1649, the Rump Parliament, under his control, dispatches him to Ireland to stop Ireland by military force from becoming a royalist base supporting Ormonde and Charles II. Appointed Commander in chief of the expedition, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on 22 June 1649, he lands on the island with 12,000 well trained men, notably the famed “Ironsides” of the New Model Army, the cavalry troop he lead to victory in Naseby (14 June 1645) and Preston (17 August 1648).
The type of warfare waged by Cromwell in Ireland had much in common with the military practices prevailing on the continent during the Thirty Year War (1618-1648). Determined to « carry on the great work against the barbarous and bloodthirsty Irish »
whom he detested, he systematically resorted to humiliations and massacres. In Drogheda, on 11 September 1649, his soldiers killed between 2 and 3,000 people, women, children and the elderly included. His troops inflicted the same fate upon Wexford in October 1649. The savagery of the Fall of Drogheda contributed in no small part to build the wall of incomprehension between Ireland's Catholic and Protestant populations. Cromwell asserted his conviction that the sack of Drogheda was, in keeping with ancient biblical Justice, a legitimate God-sanctioned retribution for the 1641 massacres of Protestants: « I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent [Protestant] blood »
. By the end of May 1650, Ireland was pacified : Connaught alone still escaped English control. Before returning to Britain to fight the Scots, Cromwell promoted his son in law Henry Ireton[2] as Lord Deputy with mission to finish off the conquest of the island. Divided yet again on matters of command and objectives, the Irish ended up laying down their arms ; Galway fell in May 1652 and the last bastions of resistance in Ulster and Connaught gave up the fight in the summer.
By means of political and economical measures, the English would from then on work at bolstering their presence in Ireland in order to prevent any further insurrection. Their objectives were to punish the rebels, ensure a Protestant domination and honour the claims of the Adventurers, their fellow countrymen who put up (adventured) money towards the reconquest of Ireland against the promise of Irish estates. They suppressed the Irish parliament : henceforth the representatives elected[3] in the island would take their seat in the parliament of Westminster which would alone vote the laws concerning Ireland. On 12 August 1652, the Rump Parliament passed the Act of Settlement bitterly remembered by the Irish. This act set out the modalities of repression, discriminating between the 1641 rebels and the royalist leadership on one hand and the confederate soldiers on the other. The first must be captured and executed, the second, seen as mere “delinquents” were to lose their estates. Landowners who had not been loyal to the Commonwealth, the regime instated in 1649, had between 20 and 60 % of their land confiscated depending on the estimated degree of their “delinquency”.
In the spring of 1653, Cromwell specified the terms of implementation of this act. “Delinquent” Irish landowners whose land has been confiscated must be deported West of the Shannon, that is in the Connaught, the poorest province in the Island and in County Clare. And indeed, deportations to the West took place between September 1653 and March 1655, but it was physically impossible to transport the hundred thousands of Irish people who should have been expelled. In ten counties to the east of the river Shannon, the English government granted land to veterans of Cromwell's army and to some Adventurers. In other counties not concerned by this measure, the confiscated land became available for the government to hand over at its discretion to, say Parliamentarian commanders. This is how central government refunded the money entrusted it to fund the military campaigns and pay the troops. The expropriations and displacement of Irish families were thus a consequence of its liquidity shortage. Furthermore, they provided for the compensation of modest English farmers forced off their land by the enclosure [4]trend. According to research conducted in 1655-56 by William Petty[5], out of the 12,000 soldiers of the New Model Army to whom the Commonwealth gave land in Ireland, many sold it on to Protestant landowners but 7,500 remained in Ireland. To this number must be added that of some 10,000 Parlementarians[6] who arrived after the civil war.
What is the outcome of these policies ? Taken together, the years 1641-1659 have three major consequences. First and foremost they witness the increase of the Protestant populations in Ireland. In 1672, out of 1,100,000 people, the island numbered 300,000 non-Catholics, 100,000 Anglicans and 200,000 Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists and Quakers. Next, what with spoliation following hard on massacres, they deepen the rift between the Protestants and the Catholics ; conversely they bring the Irish and the Old English, who have a shared experience, closer together. Lastly, they result in the creation of a class of British Protestant landowner lording it over Irish tenant farmers surviving on a bare minimum. In 1640 the Catholics owned 60% of the land, in 1660 only 8 to 9%. In Ulster there is hardly any Catholic landowner left. In Munster and Leinster, Protestants control the greater part of the land. In 1662, in order partly to remedy the 1652 Act of Settlement, a law demands that “Cromwellian” landowners sell some of their land to Old English and “innocent Catholics”. This latter Act of Settlement managed to bring the share of Catholic ownership back up to 20% in 1685. But this measure was not equal to dousing the tensions between the Catholics and the diverse Protestant communities in spite of the best hopes expressed by economist William Petty. Irish support for James II[7] during the Glorious Revolution brought out once again the cleavage. But the Catholics were not united : when Primate Oliver Plunket undertook the reform of both the secular and regular clergy who had been thoroughly disorganised by Cromwell's repression, his policies were not welcome by the Franciscans to the extent that some contemplated murder.
