Thus, throughout the reigns of Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, and James I was the 'wind sown.' A group of academics has been tasked to reinvestigate a centuries-old massacre of Protestants in Ireland. English and Scotch colonists were brought in to occupy the richest parts of the soil. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. On the termination of the struggle Brian invited Essex to his castle. The coup failed and the rebellion developed into an ethnic conflict between Irish Catholics on one side, and English and Scottish Protestants on the other. The rebellion of 1641 and particularly the killings of Protestant civilians, was the justification for the Parliamentarian conquest of Ireland in 1649-53, ... the narrative that peaceful Protestants were the subject of an unprovoked and pre-planned massacre in 1641 still has emotional force in the context of sectarian divisions in Northern Ireland. There were festivities in his honour. Cromwell is a hated figure to the Irish memory. 'I am persuaded,' he wrote to the Parliament from Drogheda, 'that this is a righteous judgment of God upon those barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood.' The slaughter of the inhabitants of Drogheda and Wexford are as indelibly imprinted on the psyche of Irish Catholics as the previous massacres in Ulster are on Protestants. Manna Ministries; Treading the Olde Paths The 1641 Massacre of Irish Protestants Pastor Graham Lawther To what extent he was responsible it may be difficult to say, but it is clear that he was quite unable to restrain the excesses of the 'tumultuary rabble,' when they had been driven to outrageous extremes by the butcheries of the disciplined armies of England. University language experts have been given a grant of £334,000 to pore over thousands of witness accounts of massacres following the 1641 rebellion. I think, that, at this time of day it is absolutely impossible to say, with precise accuracy, how many of the 12,000 fell in battle, or were killed in defending their houses and property; how many perished by cold, want, and hunger, or were murdered in cold blood. I know not, and I do not think that anyone knows. ', How many of the Irish fell? There were not 300,000 English in all Ireland in 1641. The cessation of hostilities [says Clarendon] was no sooner known in England, but the two Houses declared against it... persuading the people that the Rebels were brought to their last gasp, and reduced to so terrible a famine that, like cannibals, they did eat one another; and must have been destroyed immediately, and utterly rooted out, if, by Popish counsels at Court, the King had not been persuaded to consent to this cessation. The Ocean Plague: or, A Voyage to Quebec in an Irish Emigrant Vessel is based upon the diary of Robert Whyte who, in 1847, crossed the Atlantic from Dublin to Quebec in an Irish emigrant ship. The Rebellion of 1641 was a continuance of the war waged by the Irish not only to defend their land, but to preserve the very existence of their race. He was treated with royal hospitality. The massacre lasted for several days. It is this smouldering resentment which contributed to the viciousness of the attacks on the Protestant settlers and the large numbers of fatalities involved. Whatever cruelties are to be charged upon the Irish in the prosecution of their undertaking — and they are numerous and horrid — yet their first intention went no further than to strip the English and Protestants of their power and possessions, and, unless forced to it by opposition, not to shed any blood. The 'peace' so made left Ireland tranquil. 'Well would it have been both for England, and Ireland,' says Mr. Joyce, 'if a similar policy had been followed in the succeeding reigns.'. On the 23rd December, 1641, a Commission was issued by the Government to make inquiries on oath respecting the rebellion. Northern Ireland has begun to grapple with the question of how to represent the 1641 rebellion to a new generation of visitors to 1641 massacre sites, including Portadown. 'Horrid crimes,' cold-blooded murders, were ultimately committed by the Irish, and Sir Phelim O'Neil shares responsibility for some of these excesses. . The 1641 rebellion was a Catholic uprising that broke out on October 23, 1641. The 1641 website and an accompanying exhibition on ‘ Ireland in Turmoil ’ were launched at the anniversary of the outbreak of the Rebellion, 22 October 2010, by President Mary McAleese and the late Ian Paisley, Lord Bannside. On the 30th of November, Ormonde wrote to the King, 'the rebels are in great numbers, for the most part merely armed with such weapons as would rather show them to be a tumultuary rabble, than an army.' He allowed 800 English settlers to leave with their property. To sum up the whole question of the Rebellion of 1641, it comes to this:—. The native population was driven from the rich lands to the poor, and English and Scotch tenants were imported instead. Murders and outrages began when a war of extermination was waged against the Irish; 5. The combatants, on both sides, were at length exhausted, and terms of peace were proposed. In reprisal the rebels massacred Protestants in Portadown and elsewhere. The expression, 'nits make lice,' was used by the soldiers to justify the murder of infants. Today’s date, 22 October, which marks its anniversary, ought to be known by every Ulsterman and woman as well as they know their own birth date. But there is nothing specially sacred in an English blade of grass. Lord Caulfield was shot at Clongorth Castle by one of the 'rabble;' but O'Neil was absent at the time, and knew nothing of the business. The policy of extermination and confiscation — the policy of 'stamping out the Irish,' as if, to use the language of Mr. Froude, they were of 'no more value than their own wolves' — was at once adopted, and rigorously enforced. It is certain [says Mr. Lecky] that there was nothing resembling a massacre in the first days of the Rebellion. The wrongs inflicted on Ireland had not been done by Scotland, but by England. Atrocity and Massacre in the Early Modern World. It is equally certain that, before a week had passed, the troops slaughtered numbers of the rebels without the loss of a man on their side. There is yet another matter on which I must touch by way of introduction. For years before the Rebellion broke out, English and Scottish lords had been taking over lands in Ireland to grow rich. The Irish, apparently, desired to have no quarrel with them. But, if, when the burglar takes his stand in the dock, he complains that you broke his head, what think you would the judge say? He had strong prejudices against the Irish and the Catholics. The sheer volume of deaths associated with the 1641 rebellion is a contentious issue, not least because the number of Protestant fatalities was soon inflated to several hundreds of thousands by contemporary and subsequent Protestant writers. The planners of the rebellion were a small group of Irish landowners, mainly Gaelic Irish and from the heavily planted province of Ulster. Provoked by the 'accumulated wrongs and anomosities' of generations, the people rose against the foreign oppressors who had robbed them of their lands and planned the destruction of their race. ', In 1575, Essex sent Captain Norris with a force of English soldiers to attack the Scots in Rathlin Island. Far different was the conduct of the great Irish leader, Owen Roe O'Neil. THERE is no subject, connected with Irish history about which so many untruths have been told as about the Rebellion of 1641. The 1641 rebellion remains a controversial event in Irish history. The Irish Rebellion of 1641 (Irish: Éirí Amach 1641) began as an attempted coup d'état by Irish Catholic gentry, who tried to seize control of the English administration in Ireland to force concessions for Catholics. Her account is not a history of the famine, but personal eyewitness testimony to the suffering it caused. Therewere not 200,000 English in Ulster. 1641 Depositions. Mrs Nicholson’s recollections of her tour among the peasantry are still revealing and gripping today. The rebellion had broken out in October 1641 and was marked by attacks by dispossessed native Irish on the English and Scottish Protestant settlers who had arrived in Ulster in the Ulster Plantationabout 30 years earlier. It may be that you have acted with unnecessary, and even reprehensible violence. But instead thereof, they gave him a volley of shot, and said with a loud voice: Bedell's family, with about 1,200 English, set out later for Dublin. Irish sentiment was not wholly ignored, Irish views were more or less considered. A bloody episode in Irish history, the 1641 rebellion erupted in the first instance in Ulster, when rebel Catholic elements surprised Protestant settlers, massacring large numbers. He continues:—. The chiefs were to acknowledge him as 'King of Ireland;' he was to leave them in possession of their lands (though they were to hold these lands on the terms of feudal tenure rather than in accordance with Irish tribal law), and in the enjoyment of political autonomy. 'I would rather die,' said the great Lord Halifax, 'than see a blade of English grass crushed by the foot of a foreign trespasser.' It was a thoroughly representative Irish body. As the English had sown, so had they reaped. Instead of showing him quietly to the door, you seize him neck and crop, pitch him into the street, and fracture his skull. I am myself prepared to accept Mr. Lecky's statement of the case, that, 'probably by far the greater number of those who were represented as massacred died in this manner [driven from their homes in the winter nights] from cold, and want, and hardship. Six counties were declared to be forfeited to the Crown, under an artificial treason law which had no hold on the Irish conscience. The war of chicane succeeded to the war of arms, and of hostile statutes; a regular series of operations were carried on in the ordinary courts of Justice, and by special commissions, and inquisitions; first under the pretence of tenures, and then of titles in the crown, for the purpose of the total extirpation of the interest of the natives in their own soil — until this species of ravage being carried to the last excess of oppression and insolence ... it kindled the flames of that rebellion which broke out in 1641. The 1641 rebellion remains a controversial event in Irish history. They were met by the English settlers — the Cosbeys, the Hovedens, the Hartpools. Before them lay the gloomy and almost certain prospect of banishment from the land which remained to them [and] of the extirpation of the religion which was fast becoming the passion as well as the consolation of their lives. A second Commission was issued on the 18th of January, 1642, and 'murders' were included in it; but the fact that 'murders' were not included in the first seems to show that murders were not a prominent feature at the outbreak of the Rebellion. For that reason, it conveys the reality of the calamity in a much more telling way. The settlers were left to shift for themselves as the natives had been left to shift for themselves, the natives recovered their own. Their sole object was to drive out the settlers and to recover the lands. Hume painted a very harsh picture of the 1641 Rebellion, 'an event', he tells us, 'memorable in the annals of human kind, and worthy to be held in perpetual detestation and abhorrence'.' The Portadown massacre took place in November 1641 at Portadown, County Armagh, during the Irish Rebellion of 1641. O'Reilly captured Belturbet. The Irish chiefs were dispossessed, and English and Scotch adventurers poured in to take their place. 1641 Ulster massacres: Ulster, Ireland: 4,000–12,000 The Ulster Massacres were a series of massacres and resulting deaths amongst the ~4,000–12,000 Protestant settlers which took place in 1641 during the Irish Rebellion. The Irish Rebellion of 1641 was a result of Protestant plantations taking over Irish lands. There was no people under Heaven lived in a more flourishing state and condition for peace and plenty of all things desirable in this life, when, on a sudden, we were turned out of house and hold, and stripped of all outward enjoyments, and left naked and bare in the winter; and on the Sabbath day put to flight but had no place to flee to. They set out for Dublin. Why, the answer is obvious: What business had you in the house? The so-called 1641 rebellion actually lasted for almost ten years, spreading to other areas of Ireland when the native Irish of Ulster were joined in revolt by their Old English co-religionists. The 'wolves' on this occasion were the O'Neils of Clandeboy. Me they stripped to my shirt in miserable weather; my wife was not so barbarously used; both of us, with a multitude of others, hurried to Moein Hall. When the 1641 rebels began seizing the property of settlers a number of massacres by settlers took place, including Islandmagee where the Catholics had not joined any rebellion. Later on we shall see how many of the 20,000 fell; but for the present, I shall pass from this part of the subject asking the reader to bear in mind that we have to deal with 20,000, and not with 300,000. 'Blood' was ultimately 'shed;' horrid crimes' were committed by the 'tumultuary rabble;' but not, in all probability, until the disciplined armies of England showed the example. The Irish Rebellion of 1641 came about because of the resentment felt by the Catholic Irish, both Gael and Old English, in regards to the loss of their lands to Protestant settlers from England and Scotland. Ireland memories of this time were of massacre, defeat, and mass dispossession. Memory of 1641. CHAPTER XI. The sword was not found efficient. Contemporaries in Ireland, England and Europe interpreted the Irish rebellion of 1641 as part of a universal catholic plot to destroy the protestant faith. -- History Publisher London Murray Collection robarts; toronto Digitizing sponsor MSN Contributor Brian, his wife, and brother were sent to Dublin Castle, where 'they were cut into quarters. The Irish were not left in a position to make estimates; and the English writers cared not to reckon the number of 'wolves,' or 'worms' that were destroyed. Henry refused to adopt this policy. Year after year, over a great part of all Ireland, all means of human subsistence was destroyed, no quarter was given to prisoners who surrendered, and the whole population was skilfully and steadily starved to death. Irish women and Irish children rushed to the spoil even more savagely than the men. By November 1641, armed parties of Ulstermen were rounding up British Protestant settlers and marching them to th… In 1541, Henry VIII summoned a parliament in Ireland. It was the English name that was abominated. It was agreed that the English settlers should hold the lands they had captured, and that the Irish clans should keep the lands they had preserved; and that both should, in future, live side by side in friendship. This gave the Irish breathing space to create the v This gave the Irish Catholics breathing space to create the. The Rebellion broke out after ninety years of untold wrongs and miseries inflicted on the native race; 2. Mr. Lecky reminds us, that even Sir Phelim O'Neil — the one blameworthy rebel leader — 'had the reputation much more of a weak and incapable than of a deliberately cruel man.' The Scotch-Irish in America tells the story of how the hardy breed of men and women, who in America came to be known as the ‘Scotch-Irish’, was forged in the north of Ireland during the seventeenth century. I repeat, that the civilized government which provokes, or sanctions outrage, is infinitely a greater criminal than the 'tumultuary rabble' which, maddened by injustice and oppression, and goaded by fears of utter destruction, rushes into violent excesses. XVII, No. All these things were done not by a rabble, but by trained soldiers carrying out the orders of their commanders who, in all they did, acted under the authority of the English Parliament. This is a sentiment which we can all admire. The historiography of the 1641 rebellion has suffered from serious shortcomings. The plan, to be executed on 23 October 1641, (Roman Catholic Feast of St.Ignatius of Loyola) was to use surprise rather than military force to take their objectives and to then issue their demands, in expectation of support fro… This warfare went on during the reigns of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth. The honest householder may have exceeded the bounds of moderation in defending his property against the thief. The land that was a little before like a garden of Eden was speedily turned into a desolate wilderness. The English came as conquerors. In accounting for this sudden outbreak of revolt, historians are divided about the importance of its long and short term causes. Of these half (it is said) were English royalists who had no more to do with the 'massacres of 1641' than Cromwell himself. Propagandists, politicians and historians have all exploited the depositions at different times. The Portadown massacre in late 1641 in which several hundred Protestants were killed. 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