There is a growing understanding and admiration of Ireland’s Gaelic past prior to the colonisation by the English neighbours in the 16th and 17th centuries. We are discovering more about the rich Gaelic culture and native way of life prior to the English takeover. While imperfect in some respects, the ancient system did suit the native Irish and even those from an English background, the so-called ‘Sean-Ghaill’ (Old English) who settled on this island after the 12th century.
That native Irish way of life and government was to change dramatically when the English decided to take over the land in the late 16th and 17th centuries and replace the original owners with planters from England and Scotland. This coincided with the European expansion and conquest of many countries throughout the known world, particularly the Americas, the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent.
Henry VIII of England began what would become a complete takeover of Ireland by the English government after breaking with Rome in 1535 and his decision to declare himself King of Ireland in 1541.
Traditionally, the King of England held the lordship of Ireland since Nicholas Breakspeare, Adrian IV, the only Englishman to ever sit on the throne of Peter, had granted the Lordship of Ireland to King Henry II of England as a feudal territory under papal overlordship in the 12th century. In 1541, Gaelic Irish chiefs and Anglo-Irish attended parliament when Henry VIII declared himself King of Ireland; this proclamation would also be read in Irish. Henry VIII’s assumption of the kingship of Ireland also coincided with the dissolution of the monasteries, the suppression of the Catholic Church and the prohibition of Catholic worship around which many local communities were built. Anglicanism was the only recognised religion. Those who belonged to the Presbyterian faith were also regarded with suspicion by the Anglican Ascendancy and were also penalised under the penal laws.
In the early years of the 17th century, after the Flight of the Earls in 1607, the Crown confiscated lands held by local families and parcelled it out to English and Scottish families.
Local Irish families resisted this confiscation in the aftermath of the Plantation of Ulster (1609) which led to regular imposition of martial law, particularly across Ulster, and culminated in the 1641 Rebellion. After some initial military successes the Irish Confederate Catholics eventually succumbed in 1650 to Parliamentary and Covenanter forces.
Under the Cromwellian confiscation imposed by the Victorian parliamentary forces, Catholic Ireland would pay in land for its conquest. Ultimately, most of the land of Ireland came under English control and would be owned and managed by and on behalf of absentee landlords.
The three wars which book-ended 17th century Ireland (1594-1603; 1641-1651 and 1689-1691) culminated in the major battles at the Boyne(1690) and Aughrim (1691) under William, the Prince of Orange in the Netherlands, who replaced his Catholic uncle and father-in-law James II and became known as William III.
The Treaty of Limerick (1691) – ‘broken ‘er the ink was dry’, in the immortal words of Thomas Davis -promised freedom for all but did not deliver. Instead, in the subsequent three decades the Dublin and Westminster parliaments imposed a comprehensive Penal code against Irish Catholic land, education and intermittently, Catholic worship.
Knowing what happened during the colonisation and confiscation of the land and the suppression of the Catholic religion by the colonial monarchy and government in England helps explain why Orangemen still insist on walking down the Garvaghy road.
It is crucial that our history be taught in all schools so that the younger generations have some understanding of the past. The universities and third level colleges have a responsibility to bring a better understanding of the political realities today.
Much learning and talking needs to be done if we are to make progress in building a New Ireland. It is about dealing with the consequences of colonialism – a struggle between Progressives who want to build a new future for all people on the island of Ireland and the Reactionaries who do not want to move forward, or to make concessions or accept the unpalatable truths about the past. This reactionary mindset is best exemplified in the activities of the Orange Order, which keeps the colonial mindset alive by indoctrination and parading in all parts of the six counties each year. They still believe that they have a right to walk wherever they like even where they are not wanted. They still display a supremacist attitude which has no place in a modern, pluralist democracy.
As for the bigger political picture, it is becoming increasingly obvious that equality can only be guaranteed within a new re-unified Ireland. The Stormont Assembly has failed to deliver a more tolerant society in the six counties; hardly surprising since it was not intended to do so. The enduring effects of British colonial rule cannot be overcome within the artificial six county statelet.
It is most important to understand Ireland’s early modern colonial past which is central to the understanding of the present situation in Ireland. It is necessary towards an understanding of how the British played ‘the Orange card’ (Randolph Churchill) to bring about partition and the deepening of sectarian division in the six counties.
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