Contents ▼▲
Front Matter Irish Legends The Ancient Irish Saint Patrick Christian Ireland Early Irish Kings The Invasion of the Danes Condition of the Irish People The Invasion of the Normans English Settlement of Ireland The Norman Knights The Bruces in Ireland Richard The Second In Ireland Condition of the Irish People The Irish Parliament Henry VII and Ireland Shane O'Neil Ireland Under Elizabeth The Revolt of Tyrone The Plantation of Ireland Condition of the Irish People Wentworth's Iron Rule The Ten Years' Rebellion Cromwell's Iron Hand Cromwell Settlement of Ireland The Orange and the Green The Treaty of Limerick The Penal Laws Ireland Prostrate Condition of the Irish People The Irish Patriots The Free Parliament Insurrection of Ninety-Eight The Union of the Parliaments Daniel O'Connell The Three Years' Famine Later Revolts Gladstone's Irish Reforms The Land League Gladstone Proposes Home Rule

Young People's History of Ireland - George Towle




The Orange and the Green

Just as the Irish Catholics were beginning to enjoy some degree of toleration, an event took place in England, which for a while seemed likely to overwhelm the Catholics of both countries with disaster. This was the infamous plot of Titus Oates, who pretended to have discovered a Catholic conspiracy to kill the king, the Duke of York, and others, and to seize on the government (1678). Oates also declared that this conspiracy extended to Ireland, that all the Protestants in Ireland were to be massacred, and that a French fleet was about to arrive in Irish ports. The whole story was afterwards proved to be, an atrocious lie, invented by Oates. But, for a time, it aroused an intense fear and anger among the English Protestants; and, both in England and in Ireland, the Catholics were bitterly persecuted. The Irish Catholics were disarmed; all the Catholic bishops and priests were ordered to quit the island; heavy penalties were threatened against soldiers who attended Catholic services; and the Catholics in the large towns were compelled to go outside the walls.

But after a while the panic of the Protestants subsided. It was found that Oates's plot was a fable, and that many innocent Catholics had suffered death and other miseries from the hasty anger of the people. Then the Irish Catholics returned to a tolerable state of religious freedom; and once more the priests flocked back, to say mass, and dwell among their flocks. The death of Charles the Second (1685) was followed by the accession to the English throne of a Roman Catholic, in the person of James the Second. James was the first avowed Catholic who had sat on the throne since queen Mary. His accession was therefore hailed with joy by the Irish Catholics, although time soon proved that it was a great misfortune to them. James speedily showed that he meant to establish Catholic ascendancy, both in England and Ireland. Although he appointed a Protestant, Lord Clarendon, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, he selected a violent Catholic, Richard Talbot (who is better known in history by his title of Earl of Tyrconnel), to command the Irish army.

James began to carry out his plans by replacing Protestant by Catholic officers in the army. Then, contrary to law, he appointed Catholic judges, privy councilors, and magistrates; and the charters of the Irish cities and towns were so altered as to admit Catholics to the offices from which they had hitherto been excluded. The Irish Catholics took courage from these acts. They asked the king to abolish the "act of Settlement," under which the Cromwellian settlers had been confirmed in their estates; and the Irish Tories, or outlaws, became emboldened, and made savage raids upon the English colonists, murdering, burning, and pillaging wherever they appeared. The Irish tenants refused to pay their rents; and throughout the country the Protestants, fearing a terrible retribution for the wrongs to which the Irish had been long subjected, fled for safety within the walled towns. Clarendon, the Protestant lord-lieutenant, was recalled; and the power in Ireland was given to the fanatical Catholic, Tyrconnel. The Protestants saw that worse than had happened was yet to come to them. Tyrconnel was known to be inveterately hostile to them, and to be sternly bent on restoring the upper hand to the Catholics. They therefore fled in thousands from Ireland, and it seemed certain that the Catholics were soon to become all-powerful there.

But events in England now put an entirely different face upon the affairs of both islands. James had become thoroughly detested by the enormous majority of his English subjects. His tyrannical and illegal acts had at length worn out the loyalty, even of the Tory party, who had always before stood by him. A plot was formed to dethrone him, and to place William, prince of Orange, and his wife Mary, daughter of James, on the throne. The revolution was quickly and completely accomplished. William landed in England, marched to London without fighting a battle, and took possession of the throne (1688). James fled from the palace of his fathers, seeking refuge in France. William was the champion of Protestantism in Europe, and his accession carried dismay to the Catholics throughout England and Ireland. But Tyrconnel was made of stern stuff, and, even after the flight of James, was not ready to yield Ireland up to the new king without a struggle. He promptly raised a voluntary force of nearly one hundred thousand Irish Catholics, and sent word to James that he proposed to hold out in his favor. Meanwhile many of the Protestants in the north of Ireland, seeing that they were not strong enough to meet Tyrconnel in the open field, hastened to seek safety within the walled strongholds of Londonderry and Enniskillen. There they awaited their fate with grim and determined courage.

The exiled James resolved to fight to recover his crown, on Irish soil. There was still a strong party in England and Scotland, which remained loyal to him. He thought that if he could make a successful stand in Ireland, his friends across the channel might yet rally, and drive the prince of Orange from the throne. James accordingly set sail for Ireland. With him went a fleet of twenty three vessels, in which was stored a large quantity of arms and ammunition, and which carried one hundred French officers and twelve hundred Irish exiles, and £112,000 in money. He was aided and encouraged in his expedition by Louis the Fourteenth, the French king, who, as the Catholic leader in Europe, was the mortal enemy of William of Orange. James, attended by his two illegitimate sons, the Duke of Berwick and the prior Fitz James, landed in Kinsale harbor (March 12, 1689), and advanced, greeted along his route by the fervid enthusiasm of the Irish, to Cork and thence to Dublin. As soon as he reached the capital, he summoned an Irish Parliament, which met two months later.

Both the Houses of this Parliament contained an overwhelming majority of Catholics, and two-thirds of the Commons were Anglo-Irish. Such a Parliament was likely to support James, and also to take care that the rights of Ireland should be secured in the event of James's return to the English throne. The law known as Poyning's Act, which required that all Irish measures must first be submitted to and approved by the English council, was promptly repealed. Religious liberty was decreed. Safeguards for Irish trade were adopted. Above all, the Act of Settlement, securing the Cromwellians in their lands, was abolished; and it was declared that all Catholics who had been land-owners before 1641 should recover their estates. Having thus satisfied the demands made by the Irish, Parliament proceeded to make a grant of £40,000 a month to the king, with which to carry on his war. The last act of this Parliament was to attaint over two thousand men of high treason. These were, mostly, men who had either left Ireland, or had gone over to William of Orange. Meanwhile the struggle between the Irish adherents of James, and those of the Prince of Orange, was going vigorously on. The place to which all eyes were turned was Londonderry, where the Protestants were holding out obstinately against their assailants. James himself repaired thither with some troops, and the governor of Londonderry decided to yield up the town. But the people would not permit this. They deposed the governor by force, and chose a clergyman named Walker in his place.

Still, the siege reduced the town to desperate straits; and it would have surrendered, had not aid from England opportunely arrived by sea. The siege of Londonderry was thus raised, and the Irish retreated (July, 1659). The campaign lingered listlessly through the autumn and winter. General Schomberg, a distinguished officer devoted to William, went to Ireland with four thousand men. But in both camps there was a great deal of misery. The Irish troops were ill-equipped, ill-fed, and unaccustomed to war; and the French soldiers did not get on well with them. On the other hand, the English under Schomberg suffered sorely from illness contracted in the damp regions where they were encamped, and died by hundreds.

In the early summer (1690), William of Orange, who had become impatient at the lack of the success of his troops in Ireland, landed at Carrickfergus with a disciplined army of forty thousand men. Meanwhile a French force of five thousand men, commanded by the famous Count de Lauzun, arrived to lend aid to James. It was evident that the fate of one English king or the other must soon be decided once for all on Irish soil.