Ireland and the Stuart monarchy 1660-1702

1. Ireland and the Stuart monarchy 1660-1702 Gabriel Glickman

2. Restoration Ireland – key themes • Relationship of Ireland with rest of British Isles. • Relationship of Ireland with the crown. • Relationships of communities within Ireland.

3. The Civil War and its legacy • Crown authority collapses in Ireland in 1640s – six different armies fighting. • Splits among Catholics and Protestants. • European dimension – international religious conflict. • Cromwellian conquest followed by major expropriations of Catholic land.

4. Political and economic subordination to England • Parliament constrained by Poyning’s Law. • Navigation Act shuts Irish out of Atlantic commercial economy and foreign trade. • 1667, 1671 – laws against export of Irish cattle. • Ireland has neither constitutional freedoms of Scotland nor full incorporation of Wales into England – seen as more like a colony.

5. The Irish Protestant elite • Anglicised structure of laws, parliament, religion, education. • See themselves as ‘English’ rather than ‘Irish’ or ‘British’. • Trajectory of Irish elites towards building careers in England e.g. Ormond, Sir Robert Southwell. • Tendency to press for closer incorporation with England, rather than greater independence.

6. Irish Catholicism • Irish Catholics = 80 per cent of the population but only c. 25 per cent of the land after 1662 Act of Settlement. • Exclusion from public office – many educated and seek careers in foreign Catholic countries. • Major Catholic divisions over how far to accommodate with the English crown; how far to repudiate papal power. • Greatest scope for promotion of Irish Catholics under the Crown = in the American Empire.

7. Irish Protestant Dissent • Mainly Scottish Presbyterians in Ulster; also Baptists, Quakers and Congregationalists who had come over with Cromwell. • Face coercion and prosecution under bishops of established Church of Ireland. • Greater conflict in post-1660 Ireland = not between Catholics and Protestants, but between (Protestant) Church of Ireland and the Dissenters. • Irish Protestant radicalism and conspiracy (e.g. Blood Plot) part of continuum of Dissenting unrest throughout British Isles 1660-1685.

8. Programme of James II • Much more authoritarian than in other parts of British Isles. • No attempt to extend Dissenting freedoms as well as those of Catholics. • Moves under Tyrconnell to establish Catholic monopoly over public office. • Tyrconnell’s argument – return to old governing class plus government by religious majority will make Ireland more prosperous and efficient. • Results in reawakening of sectarian tensions. • Ireland facing economic decline after Protestant exodus esp. from Cork ad Dublin.

9. The Irish war 1689-91 – sectarian identities crystallised • Clear faultline of Catholic vs Protestant, as opposed to many different political, religious and ethnic factions of 1640s Civil War. • Part of greater European conflict, with armies of William of Orange and Louis XIV entering Ireland. • Protestant and Catholic pamphlets understand conflict as religious war – adopt apocalyptic and martyrological tone.

11. Legacies of conflict • Crown seeks to formalise Protestant hold over Ireland by new laws – extending its authority. • See Irish Protestants as now totally dependent on London. • Tension between Crown and Irish Protestants who share anti-Catholic agenda but want greater freedom for Irish Parliament e.g. end to Poyning’s Law and Navigation Act.

12. Identity of Irish Protestants • Writings of King, Molyneux etc. show they still see themselves as predominantly English. • Argue that greater freedoms for Irish Parliament = granting them their full constitutional rights as Englishmen. • Want Ireland to be a full kingdom ruled separately under the crown – less like a colony. • Difference between ‘patriotism’ and nationalism (i.e. no demand for independence).

13. Opposition from the crown and from England • Lord Lieutenant Sidney, English pamphleteers etc. -wars have shown Irish Protestants totally dependent on Crown: Ireland incapable of being self-governing community. • Cost of protection from English state = submitting to English interest. • Irish elites offered more safeguards for Protestantism, but no more independence.