Irish History
And
The Fighting Irish
And
The Fighting Irish
Economics
also contributed to the outbreak of the rebellion. Interest rates in the
1630s had been as high as 30% per annum. The Irish economy had hit a recession and the harvest of 1641 was poor. The leaders of the rebellion like Phelim O' Neill and Rory O' Moore were heavily in debt and risked losing their lands to creditors. What was more, the Irish peasantry were hard hit by the bad harvest and were faced with rising rents. This aggravated their desire to remove the settlers and contributed to the widespread attacks on them at the start of the rebellion.
The planners of the rebellion were a small group of Irish landowners, mainly Gaelic Irish and from the heavily planted province of Ulster. Hugh MacMahon and Conor Maguire were to seize Dublin Castle, while Phelim O' Neill and Rory O' Moore were to take Derry and other northern towns.
Rory O' Moore of the Offaly family of the O' Moores, a cultured and travelled gentleman, is chiefly due the credit for the great resurgence of the native Irish race. For years he patiently worked both among the leading Irish families at home, Irish Generals in the Continental armies, and other representative Irish exiles and sympathisers in the European countries - to bring about the overthrow of British power in Ireland. And plans being all matured, the Rising broke in Ulster on the night of the 21st October, 1641.
Rory O' Moore of the Offaly family of the O' Moores, a cultured and travelled gentleman, is chiefly due the credit for the great resurgence of the native Irish race. For years he patiently worked both among the leading Irish families at home, Irish Generals in the Continental armies, and other representative Irish exiles and sympathisers in the European countries - to bring about the overthrow of British power in Ireland. And plans being all matured, the Rising broke in Ulster on the night of the 21st October, 1641.
RORY O' MOORE
( An Ulster Ballad of the Rising )
On the green hills of Ulster the white cross waves high,
And the beacon of war throws its flames to the sky;
Now the taunt and the threat let the coward endure,
Our hope is in God and in Rory O' Moore.
Do you ask why the beacon and banner of war
On the mountains of Ulster are seen from afar ?
Tis the signal our rights to regain and secure,
Through God and our Lady and Rory O' Moore !
For the merciless Scots, with their creed and their swords,
With war in their bosoms, and peace in their words,
Have sworn the bright light of our faith to obscure,
But our hope is in God and Rory O' Moore.
Oh ! lives there a traitor who'd shrink from the strife
Who. to add to the length of a fortified life,
His country, his kindred, his faith would abjure ?
No ! we'll strike for our God and Rory O' Moore !
And the beacon of war throws its flames to the sky;
Now the taunt and the threat let the coward endure,
Our hope is in God and in Rory O' Moore.
Do you ask why the beacon and banner of war
On the mountains of Ulster are seen from afar ?
Tis the signal our rights to regain and secure,
Through God and our Lady and Rory O' Moore !
For the merciless Scots, with their creed and their swords,
With war in their bosoms, and peace in their words,
Have sworn the bright light of our faith to obscure,
But our hope is in God and Rory O' Moore.
Oh ! lives there a traitor who'd shrink from the strife
Who. to add to the length of a fortified life,
His country, his kindred, his faith would abjure ?
No ! we'll strike for our God and Rory O' Moore !
The rising was to use surprise rather than military force to take the objectives, and to then issue demands, in expectation of support from the rest of the country. However, the plan for a farly bloodless seizure of power was foiled when the authorities in Dublin heard of the plot from an informer ( a Protestant convert named Owen O' Connolly ) and arrested Maguire and MacMahon. O' Neill meanwhile successfully took several forts in the north of the country, claiming to be acting in the King's name. Fairly quickly, events spiraled out of control of the men who had instigated them. The English authorities in Dublin over-reacted to the rebellion, which they characterised as ' a most disloyal and detestable conspiracy intended by some evil affected Irish Papists' which they claimed was aimed at a' a general massacre of all English and Protestant inhabitants ' Their response was to send troops under commanders Charles Coote and William St. Leger ( themselves Protestant settlers ) to rebel held areas in counties Wicklow and Cork respectively in early 1642. Their expeditions were characterised by what modern historian Padraig Leniham has called ' excessive and indiscriminate brutality ' against the general Catholic population there and helped to provoke the general Catholic population into joining the rebellion. The truth be told it was the same treatment and injustice that the Irish people would suffer again and again under the invader.
Meanwhile, in Ulster, the breakdown of the state authority prompted widespread attacks by the native Irish population on the English Protestant settlers. Initially, Scottish settlers were not attacked by the rebels but as the rebellion went on, they too became targets. Phelim O' Neill and the other insurgent leaders initially tried to stop the attacks on the settlers, but were unable to control the local peasantry. A contemporary - though hostile - Catholic source tells us that O' Neill " strove to contain the raskall multitude from those frequent savage actions of stripping and killing which were after perpetrated and gave their enterprise an odious character as well in the opinion of their countrymen as of strangers " but that " the floodgate of rapine, once being laid open, the meaner sort of people was not to be contained.
Communal uprisings spread to the rest of the country. Munster was the last region to witness such disturbances: the rebellion in Munster was in fact largely a product of the severe martial law William St Leger imposed upon the province. Many Irish Catholic lords who had lost lands or feared dispossession joined the rebellion and participated in the attacks on the settlers. However, at this stage, the attacks usually involved the beating and robbing rather than the killing of Protestants. Historian Nicholas Canny writes,
' most insurgents seemed anxious for a resolution of their immediate economic difficulties by seizing the property of any of the settlers. These popular attacks did not usually result in the loss of life , nor was it the purpose of the insurgents to kill their victims. However there were always gruesome affairs because they involved face to face confrontations between people who had long known each other. A typical offensive involved a group of Irish descending upon a Protestant family and demanding, at knife point, that they surrender their moveable goods. Killings usually occurred where Protestants resisted.
The motivations for the popular rebellion are complex. Among them were the desire to reverse the plantations; rebels in Ulster were reported as saying ' the land was theirs and lost by their fathers. ' Another motivating factor was a sharp antagonism towards the English language and culture which hand been imposed on the country and the native Irish. For example, rebels in County Cavan forbade the use of the English language and decreed that the original Irish language place names should replace English ones. A third factor was religious antagonism. The rebels consciously identified themselves as Catholics and justified the rising as a defensive measure against the Protestant threat to ' extirpate the Catholic religion. ' Rebels in County Cavan stated ' we rise for our religion. They hang our priests in England. ' Historian Brian MacCuarta writes, " Longstanding animosities against the Protestant clergy were based on the imposition of the state church since its inception thirty years previously. Ulster Irish ferocity against everything Protestant were fuelled by the wealth of the church in Ulster, exceptional in contemporary Ireland. " There were also cases of purely religious violence, where native Irish Protestants were attacked and Catholic settlers joined the rebellion.
Meanwhile, in Ulster, the breakdown of the state authority prompted widespread attacks by the native Irish population on the English Protestant settlers. Initially, Scottish settlers were not attacked by the rebels but as the rebellion went on, they too became targets. Phelim O' Neill and the other insurgent leaders initially tried to stop the attacks on the settlers, but were unable to control the local peasantry. A contemporary - though hostile - Catholic source tells us that O' Neill " strove to contain the raskall multitude from those frequent savage actions of stripping and killing which were after perpetrated and gave their enterprise an odious character as well in the opinion of their countrymen as of strangers " but that " the floodgate of rapine, once being laid open, the meaner sort of people was not to be contained.
Communal uprisings spread to the rest of the country. Munster was the last region to witness such disturbances: the rebellion in Munster was in fact largely a product of the severe martial law William St Leger imposed upon the province. Many Irish Catholic lords who had lost lands or feared dispossession joined the rebellion and participated in the attacks on the settlers. However, at this stage, the attacks usually involved the beating and robbing rather than the killing of Protestants. Historian Nicholas Canny writes,
' most insurgents seemed anxious for a resolution of their immediate economic difficulties by seizing the property of any of the settlers. These popular attacks did not usually result in the loss of life , nor was it the purpose of the insurgents to kill their victims. However there were always gruesome affairs because they involved face to face confrontations between people who had long known each other. A typical offensive involved a group of Irish descending upon a Protestant family and demanding, at knife point, that they surrender their moveable goods. Killings usually occurred where Protestants resisted.
The motivations for the popular rebellion are complex. Among them were the desire to reverse the plantations; rebels in Ulster were reported as saying ' the land was theirs and lost by their fathers. ' Another motivating factor was a sharp antagonism towards the English language and culture which hand been imposed on the country and the native Irish. For example, rebels in County Cavan forbade the use of the English language and decreed that the original Irish language place names should replace English ones. A third factor was religious antagonism. The rebels consciously identified themselves as Catholics and justified the rising as a defensive measure against the Protestant threat to ' extirpate the Catholic religion. ' Rebels in County Cavan stated ' we rise for our religion. They hang our priests in England. ' Historian Brian MacCuarta writes, " Longstanding animosities against the Protestant clergy were based on the imposition of the state church since its inception thirty years previously. Ulster Irish ferocity against everything Protestant were fuelled by the wealth of the church in Ulster, exceptional in contemporary Ireland. " There were also cases of purely religious violence, where native Irish Protestants were attacked and Catholic settlers joined the rebellion.
