Seventeenth-Century Ireland and the New British and Atlantic Historie

8/18/2019 Seventeenth-Century Ireland and the New British and Atlantic Historie

1/18

Seventeenth-Century Ireland and the New British and Atlantic Histories

Author(s): Jane OhlmeyerSource: The American Historical Review, Vol. 104, No. 2 (Apr., 1999), pp. 446-462Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2650374 .

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2/18

AHR Forum

Seventeenth-Century

Ireland and the New British and

Atlantic Histories

JANE OHLMEYER

THERE IS A SPECTRE HAUNTING IRISH

HISTORIOGRAPHY,

one more ominous

perhaps

than revisionism or nationalism-the

spectre

of the 'British

Problem,' carrying

with

it the threat of another colonial impulse. So begins Willy Maley's review of two

works

on the New British

History

in

a recent

issue

of

History

Ireland.' How

legitimate

are

these

concerns? Should

the

British Problem be

regarded

as some

sort of academic imperialism

intent

on

subverting

the

study

of

early

modern Irish

history and of polluting

a distinctive historical

tradition?

Certainly,

Ireland's often

tortured relationship

with

England

remains a

particularly

sensitive issue and the

source of many scholarly

debates.2

Yet,

like it or

not, England

ruled Iieland as a

colony

for much of

the

early

modern

period.

The

English legal

and

parliamentary

systems,

the

British

sovereign,

and

the

Protestant faith

had

a dramatic

impact

on

the

formation

of the Irish

state, Irish political culture,

and the Irish mind.

Any

discussion of

the

British Problem

or the

New

British

History

must

begin

with

J.

G. A. Pocock's seminal article of

1974-1975,

in which he

attempted to

redefine the field of British history and set an agenda for its study within the context

of the

English-speaking

Atlantic world.3Pocock

implored Irish, Scottish, and,

above

I am

grateful

to David

Armitage,

Nicholas

Canny,

Tom

Connors, David Ditchburn, William Naphy,

Eamonn

6

Ciardha, and Geoffrey Parker for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this

article.

A

version was

presented

to

the

History Department Faculty

Seminar

at University College,

Dublin,

and I

would

like to thank the

participants, particularlyTom Bartlett,

for their

suggestions for

improvement.

This

article is

dedicated

to the memory

of Father

Donal Cregan (d. 1995), who

impressed on me the need to situate the history of early modern Ireland in its local, national, and

international

contexts.

' Willy'Maley's

review of

Brendan

Bradshaw and

John

Morrill, eds.,

The British

Problem,

c.

1534-1707. State Formation n theAtlanticAArchipelagoLondon, 1996),

and

Alexander Grant and

Keith

Stringer, eds., Uniting

he

Kingdom?

The

Making of

British

History (London, 1995),

in

Histoty

Ireland

4,

no.

4

(1996): 55. Maley quite rightly

draws

attention

to

the lingering Anglocentrism

of recent

volumes,

especially

the one

by Stringer

and

Grant

that

derived

from

the

1995 Anglo-American

Conference on

the Formation

of

the United

Kingdom.

2

The

debate between

Irish

revisionists

and

anti-revisionists continues to rage. The most

important contributions have been reprinted in Ciaran Brady, ed., InterpretingrishHistory:Th-eDebate

on Historical

Revisionism,

1938-1944

(Dublin, 1994).

Also see D.

George Boyce and

Alan

O'Day, eds.,

The Making of

Modern Irish

History:

Revisionismand the

Revisionist Controversy London, 1996). This

sort

of

controversy

s

by

no means

unique

to Ireland.

See,

for

example,

the review

essays

on

American

exceptionalism

in AHR

102 (June 1997): 748-68.

3

J. G. A.

Pocock,

British

History:

A Plea for a New

Subject, Jouirnal f ModernHistory 47, no.

4

(1975): 601-21, orig. pub.

in

the New ZealandHistoricalJolrnal 8 (1974): 3-12. The

Jolurnal

f Modern

Histoty

invited A. J. P.

Taylor, Gordon Donaldson, and Michael Hechter to comment on Pocock's

446


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3/18

Seventeenth-Centuty

Ireland and the New British and Atlantic Histories

447

all, English historians to

abandon the narrow, nationally centered

approach that

had traditionally characterized

the study of British history. He argued that

British

history should instead

denote the plural history of a group of cultures

situated

along an

Anglo-Celtic frontier and should

incorporate the history of the British

colonies in

North America

(prior to 1783) and of those nations that formed

part

of

the British

Empire.4 Where, a

generation later,

does Pocock's plea for a New

British

History stand? What effect has it had on the

study of early modern Ireland?

It could

be argued that

historians

of

early modern Ireland have long

been

writing

non-Anglocentric British history. Scholars working in

the 1930s and 1940s, espe-

cially Donal Cregan and G. A.

Hayes-McCoy, paid particular attention to

the

relations between Ireland and

Britain, as did others, whose

publications

date

largely

from

the 1950s and 1960s.5

More recently, works by Toby Barnard, Brendan

Bradshaw, Karl Bottigheimer, Ciaran Brady,

Nicholas Canny, Michael

Perceval-

Maxwell, and David

Stevenson-to

name

but a few-all show special

sensitivity

to

the

complex relations between

the three kingdoms

in

the sixteenth

and

seventeenth

centuries.6

However, this body of scholarship failed to

capture the attention of

the

Anglo-American

establishment. Accolades fell instead

to

Conrad

Russell,

whose

two books

on the British theme generated-and

continue to generate-a lively

thesis; for their rather disdainful and unhelpful responses and Pocock's reply, see 622-28. For a

full

discussion of Pocock's publications on this subject and the important New Zealand context, see David

Armitage's essay above, 427-45.

4

Pocock, British History: A Plea for a New Subject, 605.

5

See,

for

example, G.

A.

Hayes-McCoy, Scots MercenatyForces in Ireland

(1565-1603) (1937; rpt.

edn., Dublin, 1996); Hugh Hazlett, The Financing of the British Armies

in

Ireland, 1641-9, Irish

Historical

S4udies

1

(1938); Donal Cregan,

An

Irish Cavalier:

Daniel

O'Neill,

Stutdiahibernica

3

(1963): 60-100; 4 (1965): 104-33; and 5 (1965): 42-76; Irish Recusant Lawyers n Politics

in

the Reign

of

James I, IrishJurzist (Winter 1970): 306-20; and Irish Catholic Admissions to the

English

Inns

of

Court, 1558-1625, Irish Julrist5 (Summer 1970): 95-114; Aidan Clarke, The Old English

in

Ireland,

1625-42

(New York, 1966); Hugh F. Kearney, Strafford n

Ireland,

1633-41:

A

Stuldy

n

Absolultism

(1959; rpt. edn., Cambridge, 1989); Kearney, The British

Isles:

A Histo;y of

Folur

Nations

(Cambridge,

1989);

and J.

C. Beckett,

The

Makingof Modernz

h-eland,

603-1923 (London, 1966). Beckett

first

coined

the

phrase War of the Three Kingdoms.

6

For references to Bradshaw'sworks, see note 15 below; Karl Bottigheimer, EnzglishMoneyand Irish

Land:

The 'Adventurers n the Cronmwellianzettlementof Ireland (Oxford, 1971); and

English Money

and

Irish Land: The 'Adventurers' n the CromwellianSettlement of Ireland, Jourznal f BritishStuidies

7 (1967): 12-27; T. C. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland: English Government and Reform in

Ireland,

1649-1660 (Oxford, 1975); Ciaran

Brady,

The Chief Governors:TheRise at-dFall of ReformGovernment

in Tuldor

heland,

1536-1588 (Cambridge, 1994); Nicholas Canny, The Attempted Anglicization

of

Ireland in the

Seventeenth Century: An Exemplar of 'British History,'

in

R. G.

Asch, ed.,

Three

Nations-A

Conmmon

Histoiy (Bochum, 1993);

David

Stevenson,

Scottish Covenanters

and

Irish

Confederates: cottish-IrishRelations in the Mid-SeventeenthCentulty Belfast, 1981); Michael

Perceval-

Maxwell, Ireland and the Monarchy

in

the Early Stuart Multiple Kingdom, in HistoricalJowlznal

4

(1991); Ireland and Scotland, 1638 to 1648, in John Morrill, ed., The Scottish Covenant n Its British

Context

(Edinburgh, 1990);

Ulster 1641

in

the

Context

of Political

Developments

in

the

Three

Kingdoms,

in Brian

Mac Cuarta, ed., Ulster 1641: Aspects of

the

Rising (Belfast, 1993);

and

Perceval-Maxwell, The Ouitbreak f the Irish Rebellion of 1641 (Dublin, 1994). Also see Jane H.

Ohlmeyer, Civil Warand Restoration

n

the ThreeStutar-t ingdonms: he Careerof Randal

MacDonnell,

Marqluis f

Antrinz,

1609-1683

(Cambridge, 1993);

and

Strafford,

the

'Londonderry

Business' and

the

'New

British History,'

in

J. F. Merritt, ed., The Political Worldof Thonmas

Wenztworth,

arl

of

Strafford,

1621-1641 (Cambridge, 1996); Robert Elkin, The Interactions between the

Irish

Rebellion

and the

English Civil Wars (PhD dissertation, University

of

Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,

1961);

and

the

various articles

by

John A.

Murphy

in

Jolurnalof

the Cork

Historical anzdArchaeological

Society,

especially

The Politics

of

the

Munster Protestants, 1641-1649, 76 (1971):

1-20.

AMERICAN

HISTORICAL

REVIEW APRIL 1999




4/18

448

Jane

Ohlmneyer

debate and helped

prepare the ground

for the

publication

of further works on the

British theme. 7

Others remain skeptical

of the New British

History

and,

with some

justification,

fear

that this reinvention of

the wheel will

merely perpetuate

the

Anglocentrism

characteristic of the study of early modern English history. In the words of Keith

Brown,

a

professor

of Scottish history

at the

University

of St. Andrews, It is all very

well to have our

subject

treated as 'serious' history by

the

Anglo-American

establishment,

but

there is a

danger

in

reaching

out too

eagerly

for what could

be

a

poisoned

chalice. 8 Nicholas

Canny,

a

professor

of Irish

history

at

University

College Galway,

concurs.

He criticizes the Anglocentric nature of many

recent

works of

New

British History

and chastises

Irish and

Scottish historians,

who have

jumped on the British history bandwagon,

for

neglecting

developments that might

be considered [by

the

English]

of mere local

or

national significance and for

ignoring the impact that England had on Ireland and Scotland.9 While the English

historian Peter Lake

is

prepared

to

acknowledge

the value of collating and

comparing

Caroline

policy

in the three

kingdoms,

he

maintains

that this . .. is not

so much a

new

subject-British history-as

a more integrated reading of English,

Scottish and

Irish histories. '10

He believes that to do more than

this

will facilitate

the introduction

of a

covertly

Anglocentric, English

master narrative through the

back door. '1

Which

is,

of

course, precisely

what the

proponents

of the New British

History

claim to be determined

to avoid.

All

agree

that Britishhistoryshould not use events

in Ireland and Scotland simply to enrich English history.12But what, then, is the

7Conrad Russell,

The

Fall

of

the

British

Monarchies,

1637-1642

(Oxford, 1991);

and

Russell,

The

Caucses f

the

English Civil War(Oxford, 1990). In the preface to Fall, Russell noted how in the course

of

his

research

he

became convinced

that it

is impossible

to tell the

English story by itself,

and

this

book

has been slowly

transformed nto an

attempt

at

genuinely

British

history (p. vii). Russell's articles

The British Problem and the English Civil War, WhyDid Charles I Call the Long Parliament, The

British Background to the Irish

Rebellion of

1641, and The First Army Plot of 1641, have been

conveniently reprinted in Conrad Russell, Unreivolittionaty nglanzd, 603-1642 (London, 1990), pt. 4.

Six recent collections

of

essays collectively

demonstrate the

enthusiasm

with which some members of

our

profession

have embraced the New British

History: Bradshaw and Morrill, British

Problein;

Grant

and Stringer, Uniting the Kingdom; Steven G. Ellis and Sarah Barber, eds., Conqlest and Unionl:

Fashioning a British State, 1485-1725 (London, 1995); Brendan Bradshaw and Peter Roberts, eds.,

British Consciouisness nd

Identity:

The

Makingof Britain, 1533-1707 (Cambridge, 1998); S. J. Connolly,

ed., Kingdoms United?

Great Britain and Ireland since 1500:

Integration

and

Diversity (Dublin, 1999);

and, most recently, Glenn Burgess, ed., The New British Histoty: Foutnding Modern.State, 1603-1715

(London, 1999).

For the Middle

Ages,

see R. R.

Davies, ed.,

The British

Isles, 1100-1500. Comparisons,

Contr-asts

nd

Colnnections Edinburgh, 1988);

and

his

presidential

addresses to the

Royal

Historical

Society

entitled The

Peoples

of

Britain

and

Ireland

1100-1400,

Transactions

of

the

Royal

Historical

Society,

6th

ser.,

4

(1994): 1-20;

5

(1995): 1-20;

6

(1996): 1-24; 7 (1997): 1-24;

and

Colm

McNamee,

The Warsof the Brulces:Scotland, Enlglandand Irelandcl,306-1328 (Edinburgh, 1997).

S

Keith Brown, British History:

A

Sceptical Comment,

in

Asch, ThreeNations, 117. He refines his

arguments

in

Seducing the Scottish Clio:

Has

Scottish History Anything

to

Fear from the

New British

History,

in Burgess, New British Histo,y, 238-65.

9 Canny, Attempted Anglicization, 50. Also see the interviewin History reland 6, no. 1 (1998): 54.

For a recent

perceptive discussion, see

T.

C. Barnard,

British and

Irish History,

in

Burgess, New

British Histoiy, 201-37.

10

Peter Lake, Retrospective: Wentworth's Political World in Revisionist and Post-Revisionist

Perspective,

in

Merritt, Thom)asWentworth, 81.

l Lake, Retrospective, 281-82.

12

For instance, see Ellis, Introduction,

in Ellis and

Barber, Conquest and Union, 2; and John

Morrill,

The

British Problem, c. 1534-1707,

in

Bradshaw and Morrill, Britisli Problem, 4.

AMERICAN HISTORICAL

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Seventeenth-CenturyIreland and the New British and Atlantic Histories

449

New British History?

Certainly, prior to union between England and Scotland in

1707 (never mind the union with Ireland in 1800-1801), the notion of

a British state

is misleading. Moreover,

despite the efforts of James VI/I to create a

common sense

of nationhood for his English

and Scottish subjects, the formation of

a

distinctive

British dentity was, as Linda Colley has argued, a product of the eighteenth and

early nineteenth centuries.'3 Much more helpful is the composite

monarchies

or

multiple kingdoms model

so eruditely articulated by H. G. Koenigsberger

and

developed by Conrad Russell

(for England), by Jenny Wormald (for Scotland),

and

by

Michael

Perceval-Maxwell(for Ireland).14 When viewed from the

perspective

of

early

modern

Ireland,

it

could

be argued

that

the phrase British

history

remains

a

synonym for the collective

political histories of England, Scotland,

and

Wales.

Moreover,

it constitutes

a

history

that has been written

largely

from

the

viewpoint

of the

ruling elite, which,

being primarily Protestant

and

overwhelmingly male,

cannot adequately encompass the complex relationships between all three Stuart

kingdoms and their peoples.

Thus if Ireland is to be included in future discourses,

perhaps

the more

cumbersome term British and Irish Histories is more

appro-

priate, though not

entirely satisfactory.

To

DATE,

THE

NEW BRITISH

AND IRISH HISTORIES have focused on political

developments, such as state formation and the impact of the Protestant reformation

in

Ireland.15The origins and

course of the Warsof the Three Kingdoms -the

civil

wars fought for, in, and between the subjects of the Stuart monarchies during the

1640s-have

also

attractedattention, as

has

the crisis,

now dubbed

the

Warsof the

Three

Kings,

that

gripped Ireland and

Britain

after 1688.16

Just as these

civil

13

With

the

Union of the Crowns in

1603, James

VI of

Scotland

became James

I of

England

and

Ireland. Dauvit Broun, R. J. Finlay, and Michael Lynch, eds., Imnage nd Identity: The Making

and

Remakingof Scotland

throtugh

he Ages (Edinburgh, 1998), 93-94; and Linda Colley, Britonzs: orging he

Nation,

1707-1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992).

14

H. G. Koenigsberger, Dominium regale or dominium politicum et regale, rpt. in Politicians and

Virtuosi:Essays on Early Modern History (London, 1986). For Russell, see note 7 above. Jenny

Wormald, The Creation of British Multiple Kingdoms or Core

and

Colonies? Transactionsof the

Royal HistoricalSociety,6th ser., 2 (1992): 175-94; Perceval-Maxwell, Ireland and the Monarchy n the

Early Stuart Multiple Kingdom ;and Ireland and Scotland, 1638 to 1648.

15

Steven

Ellis

in

particular

has

called

for a

history

of the British Isles

that

examines

the relations

between

the

different peoples of the archipelago and the process of state formation, which created the

two modern states there ; Ellis and Barber,

Conqulest

nd

Union,

3. Also see Ellis,

Tuldor

rontiersand

NoblePower:TheMakingof theBritishState (Oxford, 1995); Brady, Chief Governors;and Colm

Lennon,

Sixteenth-Centwty

reland:

TheIncompleteConquest Dublin, 1994).

For

recent discussions

of the British

context of the Irish

reformation, see Brendan Bradshaw, The Tudor Reformation and

the

Revolution

in Wales and Ireland: The Origins of the British Problem, in Bradshaw and Morrill, British

Problem,

39-65; Bradshaw,

The

English Reformation and Identity

Formation

in

Ireland

and

Wales,

in

Bradshaw and Roberts,

Buitish

Consciouesness,

3-111; and

Michedl

MacCraith, The Gaelic Reaction

to

the Reformation,

in

Barber and Ellis, Conquest and

Union,

139-61.

16

John Morrill, The War(s) of the Three Kingdoms, n Burgess, New BritishHistoty,65-91. Martyn

Bennett's recent book, The Civil Wars n Britain and

Ireland,

1638-51 (Oxford, 1997), offers the first

integrated account of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms since S. R. Gardiner published his multivolume

narrative

in

1886. J.

P.

Kenyon and Jane Ohlmeyer, eds., The Civil Wars:A MilitaryHistoty of

England,

Scotland

and Ireland

(Oxford, 1998), compares

and contrasts

the

course of

the various

civil

wars

and

the relationships between the Stuart kingdoms in the 1640s. For the Wars of the Three Kings,

see

W. A. Maguire, ed., Kings in Conflict: The

Revoluttionary

War n Ireland and Its

Aftermath,

1689-1750

(Belfast,

1990).

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450 Jane Ohlmeyer

conflicts can only be fully understood within the context of

all

three kingdoms,

processes-such as identity formation in early modern Ireland-cannot

be ex-

plained without reference to Britain

and

the continent,

and to

sources

written in

languages other than English.17After the Union of the Crowns

in

1603,

the British

kings viewed Ireland as an integral part of their personal dynastic heritage.

Although

James

VI/I

concerned himself more

with the

union between

England

and

Scotland

and

treated

Ireland

as a

colony

rather

than

a

kingdom,

his

Magna

Britannia undoubtedly

included Ireland.'8 He

genuinely hoped

to unite his three

kingdoms under one imperial

crown

and

to

give

his

peoples

the freedom to

commerce

and match

together,

that so

they may grow

into one nation. '19 he same

held true for Charles I. After 1638, he treated his problem in Scotland as

a

British

one

and mobilized Irish

and English

armies to

quell

his

rebellious

Scottish

subjects.

Throughout their struggle with

the Westminster

Parliament,

the

Stuarts

shame-

lessly drew on the human and financial resources of Ireland and (after December

1647)

of

Scotland

as well

in a

desperate attempt

to

gain

back their

English kingdom.

Yet Charles

I

refused

to

grant

his

Catholic subjects political autonomy

and freedom

of

worship

in

return for the

manpower

and

military

hardware that might have

secured his

English

throne.

Even the

Catholic James

VII/II proved

reluctant to

endorse the

Declaratory

Act of

1689,

which established the

legislative

indepen-

dence

of

the

Irish

parliament. Despite

his total

dependence

on

Catholic Ireland's

support

in his

struggle against

William of

Orange,

James-like

his

father

before

him-consistently refused

to

repeal Poynings Law (1494), which

subordinated the

Irish parliament to the English Privy Council and formed the lynchpin of

Anglo-Irish

constitutional relations.

Although

the

Stuarts regarded

Ireland

as

an

indivisible

part

of

their

imperial

dominions, how their Irish subjects-Protestant

as

well as Catholic-perceived

their

relationship

with

the crown and

their

own national

identity

defies

easy

explanation,

since Ireland and Irishness meant a

variety

of

things

to

different

17

Michael Cronin recently argued that Ireland suffered from linguistic schizophrenia : English-

language histories ignore Irish-language material and Irish-language histories focus on exclusively

Irish-language material, Translating reland:

Trnalslation,

Langulages,

CulltmtresCork, 1996), 2. For

many, the linguistic barrier remains a very real one; however, given the wealth

of material that has been

translated

into

English by

bodies

like

the Irish

Texts

Society,

it

should not be an

insurmountable one.

For an excellent introduction to the wealth of material

published

in

Latin and

Irish, see Benignus

Millet,

Irish Literature

in

Latin, 1550-1700,

in T. W.

Moody, ed.,

A

New

Histoiy of Ireland, Vol. 3:

Early ModernIrelacnd, 534-1691 (1976; rpt. edn., Oxford, 1978),

Brian

0

Cuiv, The Irish Language

in

the Early Modern Period,

in

Moody, New Histoty of Ireland, vol. 3; and also Irish

Language

and

Literature, 1691-1845,

in

T. W. Moody and W.

E.

Vaughan, eds., A New Histoty of Ihelanld, ol.

4

(Oxford, 1986). Continental ideas, especially

those of the

Counter-Reformation,

also

influenced

identity

formation in

Ireland, especially among the Catholic population. See, for example, Bernadette

Cunningham,

The

Culture

and

Ideology

of Irish Franciscan

Historians

at

Louvain

1607-1650,

in

Ciaran

Brady, ed., Ideology

anid

he

Historians

(Belfast, 1991);

Donal

Cregan,

The Social and

Cultural

Background of

a

Counter-Reformation Episcopate, 1618-60,

in

Art Cosgrove and Donal McCartney,

eds., Stuldies

n

IrishHistoiy, Presenzted

o R.

DludleyEdwards Dublin, 1979), 85-117; FranciscanFathers,

eds., Father LulkeWadding Dublin, 1957), especially the chapters by Tomas 0 Fiaich, Aubrey Gwyn,

and

Lucian Ceyssens; Marc Caball, Faith, Culture and Sovereignty: Irish

National Identity

and Its

Development, 1558-1625,

in

Bradshaw

and

Roberts, British Consciousness, 112-39; and Hiram

Morgan,

Faith

and Fatherland

in

Sixteenth Century Ireland, Histoiy Irelanid

3,

no. 2

(1995):

13-20.

iS

Wormald,

Creation

of

British

Multiple Kingdoms

or Core and Colonies?

175-94; Arthur

Williamson,

Patterns of British

Identity: 'Britain' and

Its

Rivals

in

the Sixteenth and

Seventeenth

Centuries,

in

Burgess,

New British

Histoiy, 138-73.

19

The Statiutes t

Large Passed in the ParliamentsHeld in Irelanid ..

(Dublin, 1786), 443,

442.

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Seventeenth-Centuty

Ireland and the New

British and Atlantic Histories 451

people.20 Moreover,

as

Toby Barnard recently pointed out, In Ireland, ethnicity

hardly reflects unpolluted gene pools of Gaels, English, Welsh and Scots, but

comprehends mongrel

populations. '21

In Ireland, as elsewhere in early modern

Europe, identity formation proved to be an ongoing process that was defined and

redefined by prevailing political, religious, and socioeconomic

developments.22

Certainly,

the

only

Irish Protestants who

consistently referred to themselves as

being British or Britons-and continue to do so-were the Scottish and English

colonists

in

Ulster. This label

was also

applied

to

them by members of the Old

English community who

had

converted to Protestantism. Interestingly, this group's

sense of

identity,

so

eloquently expounded by

James

Ussher,

archbishop

of

Armagh,

sought to anchor the reformed Protestant firmly to the Gaelic past. 23To confuse

matters further, the New English settlers who colonized Ireland after the onset of

the Protestant reformation

in

the 1530s

largely

flaunted their

Englishness.

However, as Barnard'sinsightful study of the collective mentality of the Protestant

community demonstrates,

the onset of the first

English Civil

War

(1642)

forced

Irish Protestants to choose between king and Parliament and resulted in something

of an

identity

crisis for

many. Those

who

opted

for

Charles

I

continued to tout their

Englishness, while those

who

sided with Parliament and later Oliver Cromwell

viewed

themselves primarily

as

Protestants

of

Ireland. Increasingly, religion became

the surest touchstone of

reliability, preparing the ground for

the

Protestant

Ascendancy

of

the eighteenth century.24Many

of

those who took up

arms

against

the king after 1642, or collaborated with Cromwell, did so reluctantly. Similarly,

after 1660, even though many Protestantsfound the Stuarts' perceived proclivityfor

popery

odious

and

resented their

eagerness

to interfere

in

the Irish

boroughs,

law

courts,

land

settlement,

and

army,

few

hoped

to

sever

links with the crown.

They

simply

wanted more

political autonomy

and

greater

control

over the

army,

judiciary,'and administration

within the context

of

the Stuart

composite

monar-

chies.25 Thus even

during

the brief

and

tempestuous reign

of the ardent Catholic

James

VII/IL,

the

majority

of Protestants

living

in

Ireland-including many

Church

of Ireland

prelates-maintained

their

allegiance

to him.

Only

William of

Orange's

militarysuccess led them

to

change

sides with

alacrity.26

20

For a contemporary Protestant view

on identity formation in Ireland, see Richard Cox, An

Apparatus or Introductory Discourse, in Hibernica anglicanca; r The Histoiy of Ireland fromn

he

Conqutest hereof by

the

English

to

This

Present Time (London, 1689).

21

Toby Barnard, Identities, Ethnicity

and Tradition among Irish Dissenters c. 1650-1750, in

Kevin

Herlihy, ed., The IhishDissenting

Tradition,

1650-1750 (Dublin, 1995), 29.

22

Explored at length in Bradshaw and Roberts, British

Conisciouisness,

specially

the essays by

Brendan Bradshaw, Marc Caball, Andrew

Hadfield, Willy Maley, Alan Ford, and Jim Smyth; and see

Nicholas Canny, Fashioning British' Worlds

in the Seventeenth Century, n Canny,Joseph E. Illick,

Gary

B.

Nash,

and

William Pencak, eds., Empire, Society

and

Labor: Essays

in

Honor of Richard S.

Dunn,

Pennsylvaniia

Histoty 64 (1997),

supplemental issue (College Park, Pa., 1997):

26-45.

23

Alan Ford, James Ussher and the Creation of an Irish Protestant Identity,

in Bradshawand

Roberts, BritishConsciouisniess,06.

24

T. C.

Barnard,

The Protestant Interest, 1641-1660,

in

Jane H. Ohlmeyer, ed.,

Ireland

from

Independence o

Occutpation,

641-1660 (Cambridge, 1995).

25

T. C. Barnard, Settling and Unsettling Ireland: The Cromwellianand Williamite

Revolutions,

in

Ohlmeyer,

Ireland.

26

J. I.

McGuire, The Church

of Ireland and the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688,

in

Cosgrove

and

McCartney,Stuidiesn Irishl

Histo;y,

137-49.

Also see Ian

McBride, The Siege of Den-y

n UlsterProtestant

Mythology Dublin, 1997).

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452

Jane Ohlmeyer

What, then, of the

Stuarts' Catholic

subjects?

Like

many

of their

Protestant

countrymen,

those of

Anglo-Norman ancestry,

such as the

earls

of

Clanricard,

stressed

their

Englishness,

often at the

expense

of their

Irishness. 27Aidan

Clarke's seminal

work on the

political

connections and culturalmakeup of

this

Old

English community clearly demonstrates that throughout the first half of the

seventeenth century they perceived

themselves as the

crown's

loyal

and devoted

servants

and

argued

that their Catholicism

in

no

way jeopardized

their fealty to a

Protestant prince.28While emphasizing

their fidelity, the Old English,

in

order to

increase the crown's dependence on

their

services, often exaggerated

the

disloyalty

and treachery

of their

compatriots,

the

Old,

or

native, Gaelic-speaking

Irish.

Recent studies

largely by

Gaelic literary scholars, especially

Brendean

0

Buachalla,

suggest that,

after the defeat

in

the

Nine Years' War

(1594-1603)

and the

Flight

of

the Earls in

1607,

the native

Irish,

while

acknowledging

the

centrality

of

Catholicism to their identity, increasingly adopted the same conciliatory, politique

attitude toward

the crown that had

traditionally

characterized the Old

English.29

Thus native Irish Catholics

warmly

welcomed

the accession of James

VI/I,

seeing

him

as

Ireland's

spouse

and

rightful

ruler.

Even Peter

Lombard,

the exiled

Catholic archbishop

of

Armagh,

dedicated his

Episcopion

Doron

(c. 1604)-penned

in

response to James's

Basilikon Doron (1599)-to James

and

in

the

preface

congratulated

him on his accession as Ireland's

legitimate

ruler. He went on to

beg

the

king

to

end the

persecution

of

Irish

Catholics

and to

grant

them

liberty

of

conscience,

since

the Irish

were,

Lombard

maintained,

his

faithful and

loyal

subjects.30

James

dismissed these overtures.

In a

speech

delivered

in

London

in

1614,he also

accused

the Irish of

disloyalty,

branding

them

as

half-subjects

.

..

[who] give your

soul to the

pope,

and to me

only

the

body;

and even it

your bodily strength,

you

divide

it

between me and

the

king

of

Spain. '31

he

apparent

mutual exclusiveness

between

loyalty

to the

crown

and to

Catholicism confounded

the

Irish political

nation for much of the seventeenth century.32The determination of the second

earl

27

Joseph Th. Leerssen, Mere Irish and Fior-Ghael. Studies

in

the Idea

of

Irish

Nationality,

Its

Developmentand Litera;yExpression rior to theNineteenth Centwry 1986; rpt. edn., Cork, 1996), offers

the best overview of identity formation among the Catholic

population

in

early modern Ireland.

28

According to Aidan Clarke, there existed a true community of secular interests between subject

and prince [which]

was

a

sufficient

guarantee

of

loyalty

without the additional cement

of

religious

conformity, Clarke, The Policies

of

the 'Old English'

in

Parliament, 1640-1,

in

J. L.

McCracken,ed.,

Historical Stludies,

V

(London, 1965);

Old

English

in

Ireland;

and Colonial

Identity

in

Early

Seventeenth Century Ireland,

in T. W.

Moody, ed.,

Historical

Studies,XI: Nationality

and

the Pursuit

of

National

Independence

Belfast, 1978).

29

Breandan

0

Buachalla, James Our True King:

The Ideology

of Irish

Royalism

in

the Seventeenth

Century,

n D.

George Boyce,

Robert

Eccleshall,

and Vincent

Geoghegan, eds.,

Political

Thought

n

Irelandsince the SeventeenthCentutiy London,

1993). Unfortunately,

0

Buachalla's recent tome on the

Stuarts and

the intelligensia, 1603-1788-Ailing ghar (Dublin, 1997)-is

not

yet

available in

English.

Also see

Micheal

Mac

Craith,

The Gaelic Reaction to the

Reformation,

in

Ellis

and

Barber, Conquest

and Union, 139-61; Bernadette Cunningham, Irish Language Sources for Early Modern Ireland,

Histoiy Ireland 4, no. 1 (1996): 41-48; Marc

Caball, Bardic Poetry and the Analysis of Gaelic

Mentalities, Histo;y

Ireland

2,

no.

2

(1994): 46-50;

and Michelle

0

Riordan,

'Political'

Poems in the

Mid-Seventeenth-Century Crisis,

in

Ohlmeyer, Ireland; and

0

Riordan, The Gaelic Mind and the

Collapse of the

Gaelic World

(Cork, 1990).

30

John

Silke,

Primate

Lombard

and James

I,

Irish

Theological Qluarterly

2

(1955):

124-49.

31

Quoted

in

Silke,

Primate Lombard and James

I,

131.

32

For a general discussion of the tensions between temporal and spiritual authority, see Glenn

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Seventeenth-Centtuy

Ireland

and

the New British and Atlantic

Histories 453

of Antrim, for example, to

preserve

intact

(and,

where

possible, to extend) his

landed inheritance

in

both Ireland and Scotland, to keep his

patrimony Catholic,

and

to

uphold traditional

Gaelic values created a personal dilemma

for

him.

He

sincerely wanted to succeed

in, and be accepted by, two very different worlds, to be

both lauded by Gaelic bards and painted by Van Dyck. For a time, he succeeded,

but the

outbreak

of the Irish

rebellion

in

1641 exacerbated Antrim's

predicament.

While

he

wanted to see the free exercise

of

the Roman

religion,

which

I

am

devoted to and am

engaged to

maintain in

duty

to God and

respect

of

my

future

happiness

and

salvation, he nevertheless remained for much of the 1640s a

loyal

supporter of Charles

1.33

Other Irish

Catholics-including

Sir Phelim O'Neill and Lord

Maguire,

leaders

of

the 1641

uprising-faced

related

problems. During

the

1640s, despite

the

fact

that the

Confederation of Kilkenny,

the

body that governed Catholic

Ireland

during

the war, blatantly violated the king's royal prerogatives and consistently refused to

obey

his

instructions,

its members still referred

to

themselves

as

loyal subjects,

and

the

majority

behaved as

constitutional nationalists.

Throughout

the

war, Gaelic

poets

lauded

Charles

I

as their

rightful king and

saw

themselves

as

Charles's

people. 34The Confederates'

response to

the

publication

of

the Disputatio Apolo-

getica

de

jure regni

Hiberniae

(1645),

written

by Conor Mahony,

a

Jesuit priest from

County

Cork who

had

spent

his adult life

in

Portugal, demonstrates

this

quite

clearly.

In

his

tract, Mahony congratulated

the Irish on

ridding

Ireland of

so

many

Protestants duringthe 1641

massacres

and

urged

them

to abandon Charles

I

and

to choose in his stead a king from among the native nobility.35The Confederate

supreme

council

ordered

the

book

to be burned in

Kilkenny,

as did the

mayor

and

corporation

of

Galway, deeming

it

full

of venomous

and

virulent

doctrines,

and

damnable

treasons

against

our

King

and

country. 36Hardly

surprisingly

after

Charles I's execution

in

1649,

the

majority

of Irish

Catholics,

like the

Scots,

looked

to

Charles

II

as his

legitimate

successor and

in

1660

joyously

welcomed his

restoration

as the

prince

of the

three

kingdoms. 37

A

Light

to the Blind

Burgess, ThePolitics of theAncient Constituttion: n

Introduiction

o Enzglish olitical

Thoutght,

603-1642

(University Park, Pa., 1993), 130-38; and James Brennan, A Gallician Interlude in Ireland, Irish

TheologicalQuiarterly

24

(1957): 219-37.

This

dilemma permeated the writings of numerous Catholic

clerics. See several publications of the Franciscan theologian Peter Walsh: Some Few Qulestions

conzcerninzg

he

Oath of

Allegiazce,

Propos'd

by

a

Catholick Gentlemazn

London, 1661);

The

Histomyanzd

Vindicationzf

the

Loyal

Forrnullary,

r Irish Renzonstratice

..

([London?],

1674);

and The

Controversial

Letters,

o;;

The Grand Controi'ersie, oncerningthe PretendedAluthority f Popes

...

(London, 1674).

33

A

Copie of a Letter rom the Lord Intrim

[Antrim]

n Irelanzdo the Right Honzoturableacrl f

Rutland,

BearingDate the

25 Day of Febritaiy ..

1642

[sic] (London,

1642

[sic]),

3-4.

34

Buachalla, James Our True King, 23. Much of this

is

developed

in

Micheal

0

Siochru,

Confederate

Iheland,

1642-1649:

A

Conistitittional

and Political

Analysis (Dublin, 1999).

35

This is explored further by Tadhg

0

hAnnrachain, 'Though Hereticks and Politicians Should

Misinterpret Their Good Zeale': Political Ideology and Catholicism

in

Early Modern Ireland,

n

Jane

Ohlmeyer, ed., Kinigdomor Colonzy?Political Thoutght n Seventeenth-Centwnyhelanzd Cambridge,

forthcoming).

36

Cited

in

Nollaig

0

Muraile,

The

Celebrcated ntiqtaiy (Maynooth, 1996).

Edmund

Borlase,

The

Histoiy of

the

ITisliRebellion

..

(1690; London, 1743), argued

that

despite

their censure

of

the book

we do

not find ... destatation to Mahony's principle (p. x);

while

Cox, Hibernlia

nglicaza,

asserted,

And

though this book

was

burnt ... yet it

was

suffered privately to

be

dispersed,

and was never

condemned

by the popish clergy (p. 198).

37

Buachalla, James Our True King, 28.

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454

Jane

Ohlmeyer

(ascribed to

Nicholas

Plunkett)

described the Restoration

in

the

following terms: it

pleased Almighty God after a long exile to bring back Charles

II

... There is

nothing

now to be

seen or

heard

but

joys

and

jubilees throughout

the

British

Empire for

the

royal physician

is come to

heal the three

bleeding

nations of the

British Empire. 38

Nevertheless, Irish loyalty to the crown, which transcended sectarian and ethnic

boundaries,

did

not-with

the

exception

of Protestant

Ulster-inculcate

a

sense of

Britishness.

Rather,

it

qualified

and refined both

the

Irishness

of

the native

Catholic

population

and

the

Englishness

of the Old

English

and

Protestant

communities.

Events

in

Ireland, particularly

he

outbreak

of

the

1641

rebellion,

and

the rumors of

the

wholesale massacre of Protestants

that

allegedly accompanied it,

also shaped

the formation of a distinct

English

national

identity.39

The

onset of

war

in

Ireland turned

the trickle of its

migrants to England, particularly o London, into

a flood, and these Protestant refugees brought with them tales of popish atrocities

and Irish barbarity.40Preying on a

deep-seated

anti-Catholic

paranoia, contempo-

rary propagandists and parliamentary leaders, especially John Pym, exploited this

ruthlessly, claiming that England was on the verge of being reduced to popery.41

The

publication

of works like

Sir John

Temple's

Irish

Rebellion

(1646) merely

fanned

the flames of

animus

and

played

a

powerful

role

in

fixing

an

image

of the

Irish in the minds of

the

English. According

to

Kathleen

Noonan,

Irishness

increasingly

became

a

touchstone

against

which to define

Englishness,

in

much

the same

way

that

anti-Catholic, anti-French,

and

anti-Jacobite sentiments later

forged a sense of Britishness n England and Scotland.42

FURTHER

RESEARCH INTO

THE

complex

and

ever-shifting processes

of

identity

formation

is

one

possible way

in

which

the New British and

Irish

Histories can

be

usefully applied

to all three

kingdoms

in

the

early

modern

period.43

There are

also

38

National Library of Ireland, MS 476,

A

Light to the Blind,

189.

I

am

grateful to Eamonn

0

Ciardha for bringing

this reference

to

my

attention.

39

Brendan Bradshaw, Andrew Hadfield, and Willy Maley, eds.,

Repiesenting reland:Literatureand

the Originsof

Conflict,

1534-1660

(Cambridge, 1993).

40

Kathleen Noonan, Brethren Only to a Degree: Irish

Immigration to London in the Mid-

Seventeenth Century,

1640-1660

(PhD dissertation, University

of

California, Santa Barbara, 1989).

For pre-1640 migration, see

Patrick Fitzgerald, 'Like Crickets to the Crevice of a Brew-house': Poor

Irish

Migrants

in

England, 1560-1640,

in

Patrick

O'Sullivan,

ed.,

Patterns

of Migration (Leicester,

1992), 13-35; and Cregan,

Irish

Recusant Lawyers, 306-20;

and Irish

Catholic

Admissions, 95-114.

41

Peter Lake,

Anti-Popery:

The

Structure of a Prejudice,

n

Richard Cust and Ann Hughes, eds.,

Conflict

in Earbl'Stulart

England:

Studies in

Religion

and

Politics,

1603-1642

(London, 1989), 73, 82;

Ethan

Howard

Shagan, Constructing

Discord:

Ideology,

Propaganda,

and

English Responses

to

the

Irish Rebellion of 1641, Journal of British Studies 36, no.

1

(1997):

4-33; Keith Lindley, The Impact

of

the

1641 Rebellion

upon England and Wales, 1641-5,

Irish Historical

Studies 18,

no. 70

(1972):

143-67.

42

Kathleen Noonan, 'rhe Cruell Pressure of an Enraged, Barbarous People': Irish and English

Identity

in

Seventeenth-Century Policy

and

Propaganda,

Historical

Joutrnal

1, no.

1

(1998): 152, 168.

Also see John Adamson,

Strafford'sGhost: The British Context of Viscount Lisle's Lieutenancy of

Ireland,

in

Ohlmeyer,

Ireland,

128-59.

On British

dentity formation, see Colley, Britons.

43

For early

modern

Scotland,

see

Arthur H.

Williamson,

Scottish

National Consciousness n the Age

of

James VI

(Edinburgh, 1979); Broun, Finlay,

and

Lynch,

Image

and

Identity; Keith M. Brown,

Scottish

Identity

in

the

Seventeenth

Century,

in

Bradshaw and

Roberts,

British

Consciousness,

236-58; Roger

A.

Mason, ed.,

Scots and Britons: Scottish

Political Thought and the Union of 1603

AMERICAN

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Seventeenth-CenturyIreland and the New British and Atlantic Histories 455

others.44

The three

kingdoms

model

offers historians

a

further opportunity to

examine the

cultural, linguistic, dynastic, economic,

religious,

and

geographic ties

that

bound-as well

as

divided-the Stuart monarchies

during

the

early modern

period.45For

example,

since earliest

times,

Irish

and Scottish Gaeldom

had

formed

a

distinct

cultural

entity,

with bards

composing works

aimed at

audiences

in

Ireland

and Scotland.46

A

verse

dating probably from the mid-seventeenth

century com-

posed

for Maol

Domhnaigh

0

Muirgheasaiin,

a

renowned Scottish

poet,

recounted

how

he visited

the

centers

of poetic learning

in

Ireland like a bee -stealing honey

from every flower. 47

n

Scotland, Gaelic

was

described

as

Irish, and

well

into the

eighteenth century

a dialect

known

as

Highland

Irish was

spoken

in

County

Antrim. The Irish

parliament passed legislation

in

the mid-sixteenth century

against bringing

in of

Scots, retaining

of

them,

and

marrying

with

them

(which

remained on the statute book until James VI/I had it repealed in 1612).48It had

little impact between the

1560s and 1590s, when some 25,000 mercenaries found

employment

in militarized

Ulster. Understandably, this

exodus of troops to Ulster

helped define the social

structure of

the

Western Isles, which became more geared

to

war

than elsewhere in

Scottish Gaeldom,

with

6,000 fighting men, or

(Cambridge, 1994);

and

Mason, Kingshipand the Commonweal:Political Thought n Renaissanice nd

ReformationScotland (Edinburgh, 1998), esp. chap. 6; and Keith M. Brown, The Origins of a British

Aristocracy:Integration and Its Limitations

before the Treaty of Union, in Ellis and Barber, Conqutest

and Union, 222-26. Also see Orest Ranum, ed., National Consciousness,Historyand Political Ctultulren

Early

Modern

Europe (Baltimore, Md., 1975), especially the article by J. G. A. Pocock; and Cynthia

Herrup, Britishness and Europeanness: Who Are the British Anyway? Introduction, and a series of

articles on identity formation in Jolrnal of British

Studies 31,

no.

4

(1992). Within England, outlying

regions-such as Cornwall-maintained their

distinctive identities. See, for example,

Mark

Stoyle,

Pagans

or

Raragons?

Images of the Cornish during the English Civil War, English Historical Review

111,

no.

441

(1996): 299-323; and Stoyle, Cornish Rebellions, 1467-1648, History Today 47,

no.

5

(1997): 22-28.

44

Increasingly, early modern Irish historians,

inspired by insights from other disciplines-especially

historical geography, archaeology,

anthropology, sociology, literary criticism,

and

gender

studies-are

undertaking

innovative research that crosses national

boundaries,

as

well as

religious, ethnic, social,

and

gender ones. See,

for

example, Eamonn

0

Ciardha, Tories

and

Moss-Troopers

in

Scotland and

Ireland

in

the Interregnum:A PoliticalDimension, in J. R. Young, ed., CelticDimensionsof the British

Civil

Wars

Edinburgh, 1997); Raymond Gillespie, PopuilarReligion

in

Ear-ly

Moderni reland

(Manches-

ter, 1997); Cynthia Herrup, 'To Pluck Bright Honour from

the

Pale-Faced

Moon':

Gender and

Honour

in

the Castlehaven Story, Transactions

of the Royal

Historical

Society,

6th

ser.,

6

(1996):

137-60; and David Barker and Willy Maley,

eds., An Uncertain Union: The Problem in Renaissance

Literatuire forthcoming). These developments

tend,

as

Nancy

Curtin

pointed out,

to

challenge

in

varying degrees the existence of concepts which transcend

time

and

historical and social

construction,

Curtin, 'Varieties of

Irishness':

Historical

Revisionism,

Irish

Style, Jourznal f

British Stludies

35,

no.

2

(1996): 202-03.

45

John

Kerrigan,

Birth of a

Naison, London Review

of

Books

(June 5, 1997), suggests

that

early

modern historians of the 'British and Irish

problem'

need to

think

more

intently

about culture

(p. 17).

46

For fascinating accounts of the linkages within

Gaeldom,

see

Steven Ellis,

Nationalist Histori-

ography

and the

English

and Gaelic Worlds

in

the

Late Middle

Ages,

in

Brady, Interpreting

rish

History, 166-71; and Ellis, The Fall of the Gaelic World, 1450-1650, Irish Historical Studies 32

(November 1999).

I

am

grateful

to Professor

Ellis

for

permitting

me

to read his article

in

advance of

publication.

Also see Jane

Dawson,

The

Gaidhealtachd

and

the

Emergence

of

the Scottish

Highlands,

n

Bradshawand Roberts,British

Consciouisness, 59-300;

and

Dawson,

Two

Kingdoms

or

Three? Ireland

in

Anglo-Scottish Relations

in

the

Middle of

the Sixteenth

Century,

in

Roger

A.

Mason, ed.,

Scotland

and

England,

1286-1815

(Edinburgh, 1987),

113-38.

47

Cited in

Moody, New Histoty of Ireland,

3: 541.

48

The

Statuttes,

443.

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456 Jane Ohlmeyer

buannachan, allegedly

ready

for war in the

1590s.49Given the strategic threat to

the domestic security

of all

three

kingdoms posed by

a united

Gaeldom and

the

inherent political instability of this dark corner of their dominions, the Stuart

monarchs sought to drive a wedge between Scotland and Ulster. Initially, they

targeted

the

Catholic

linkages,

but

increasingly

the state

sought

to

divide

and

harness the Protestant communities.

From the

early

seventeenth

century,

the North

Channel World expanded to

include Presbyterian

preachers, planters, and profiteers who shuttled back and forth

between Antrim and

Ayrshire, forming

a

homogeneous

unit

that, like Catholic

Gaeldom,

was

united

by

sea rather than land.50

During

the

reign

of James

VI/I,

these Protestant settlers assisted the

king

in his

attempts

to

colonize and civilize

Ulster.

For

instance,

Andrew

Knox,

who

as

bishop

of the Isles had

played

a

central

role

in

tackling problems

in

the Highlands and Islands,was later dispatched to tame

the wild Irish

of

Donegal

as

bishop

of

Raphoe. Many

other favorites of

James VI/I

also colonized Ulster

during

the

early

decades of

the seventeenth century.Andrew

Stewart,

Lord

Ochiltree,

after

serving

as the

king's

lieutenant in the

Western Isles,

settled on escheated lands

in

County Tyrone,

while

Hugh Montgomery,

sixth laird

of

Braidstone,

became

a

prominent planter

in

County

Down.51

Yet, by

the late

1630s, as relations between England and Scotland deteriorated, these colonists

were

perceived, particularlyby

the

lord

deputy

of

Ireland,

Thomas

Wentworth,

earl

of

Strafford,

as

enemies-rather

than

servants-of

the

state. Activities such as

those of the staunch

English Presbyterian

Sir John

Clotworthy,

who owned an

extensive

estate in

County

Antrim

and

was

related

by marriage

to the

partiamentary

leader John Pym, justified Strafford's

paranoia.

He

served

as a

vital human

conduit,

nurturing

an

increasingly

complex

web

of alliances between the

Scottish covenant-

ers,

the

English parliamentarians,

and the

anti-Strafford interest

in

Ireland and

played a crucial role at

Strafford's impeachment (March-April 1641), marshalling

evidence, testifying against

the

disgraced

lord

deputy,

and

introducing

the bill for

his condemnation to death.52

Despite

the

political

and

military impotence of the

Ulster

Presbyterians,

Oliver

Cromwell

carefully

monitored them

during

the

1650s,

as did

Charles

II

after 1660.

By

the

1670s,

the state

perceived

the

Ulster

Presbyterians,reinforcedby the migrationof militantcovenanters from Scotland, to

be

an

even

greater

threat to domestic

security than

the

Catholic population.53

49

Allan I. Macinnes, Crown, Clan and Fine: The 'Civilising'

of Scottish Gaeldom,

1587-1638,

Northern Scotland

13

(1993):

33. No

recent, in-depth study

of

sixteenth-century military migration

between Ireland and Scotland

has

been written, and while

Hayes-McCoy, Scots MercenaryForces,

provides a wealth of

detail,

it lacks

analysis.

50

Raymond Gillespie, Colonial Ulster:

The

Settlementof

East

Ulstet;1600-1641

(Cork, 1985);

G.

Hill,

An

HistoricalAccount of the Plantation of Ulster (1877; rpt. edn.,

Shannon, 1980);

T. W.

Moody,

The

LondonderryPlantation, 1609-41: The

City of London

and

the Plantation in Ulster (Belfast, 1939);

Michael

Perceval-Maxwell,

The

Scottish Migration to Ulster

in

the Reign of James I (London, 1973);

Philip S. Robinson, The Plantation of Ulster. British Settlement in an

Irish Landscape, 1640-1670

(Dublin, 1984).

Jean

Agnew, Belfast

Merchant Families in the Seventeenth

Centulry Dublin, 1996),

largely focuses on

merchants of Scottish extraction.

51

G.

Hill, ed.,

The

MontgometyManuscripts 1603-1706) (Belfast, 1869).

52

For a recent

account of the trial, see Maija Jansson, ed., Proceedings n the OpeningSession of the

Long Parliament (Inclulding

he

Trial of Strafford)(Rochester, N.Y., and

London, forthcoming).

53 Richard L. Greaves, 'That's No Good Religion That

Disturbs Government': The Church of

Ireland

and

the

Nonconformist

Challenge, 1660-88,

in

Alan

Ford, James McGuire, and Kenneth

Milne, eds., As by

Law

Established:The Church

of

Irelandsince

theReformation Dublin, 1995), 120-35;

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Seventeenth-CenturyIreland and the New British and Atlantic Histories 457

Historians of

any

of

the

three kingdoms

who

ignore these religious,

cultural,

and

political linkages between Ireland and Scotland do so at their peril. The

same may

be said

for

scholars of the Atlantic world. For, as Nicholas Canny recently noted,

the society that was evolving in Ulster

in

the decades previous to 1641

[might be

regarded] as a prototype of what would come into being on the mainland of North

America (and especially

in

the Middle Atlantic colonies) in the late seventeenth

and

eighteenth centuries. 54

The

Scotch-Irish also played

an

important

part

in

forging

a

distinctive American identity.55

CENTRALO

POCOCK

AGENDA

for

the revitalization

of British

history

was the

need to

situate

it

in its

Atlantic context or,

in

the

recent

words

of J.

C.

D.

Clark,

to

forge

transatlantic

bridges.56

What

role, then,

did Ireland

play

in

the Atlantic

world,

and what

impact

did the

Atlantic

world have on

Ireland? Seen

from the

perspective

of

early

modern

Ireland,

the

continental context

was

more significant

than the

Atlantic one. Trade

with

European ports, especially France and Spain, formed the

mainstay

for

the towns of Galway and Limerick.57Throughout the sixteenth and

seventeenth

centuries,

the

Catholic princes

of

Europe carefully monitored,

and

occasionally intervened in, Irish affairs.58

A

constant transfer of Irish men and

women

to

and from the

continent accompanied

these

commercial,

diplomatic,

and

military initiatives.59During

the

early decades

of

the seventeenth century, roughly

Phil Kilroy, Radical Religion in Ireland, 1641-1660, in Ohlmeyer, Ireland, 201-17; and Kilroy,

ProtestantDissent and Controversyn Ireland, 1660-1714 (Cork, 1994); Allan Macinnes, Covenanting

Ideology

in

Seventeenth-Century Scotland, in Ohlmeyer, Political Thoulght;

Marilyn J. Westerkamp,

Trilumph f the Laity: Scots-IrishPiety and the GreatAwakening, 1625-1760

(Oxford, 1988).

54Nicholas Canny, The Origins of Empire: An Introduction,

n

Canny, ed.,

The

OxfordHistoryof

the British Empire, Vol. 1: The Originsof Empire (Oxford, 1998), 16-17.

55

James Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish:

A

Social History (Chapel Hill,

N.C., 1962); and Maldwyn A.

Jones, The Scotch-Irish

in

British America, in Bernard Bailyn

and

Philip

D.

Morgan, eds., Strangers

within the Realm:

Cultltral

Marginsof the First British Empire (Chapel Hill, 1991), 284-313.

56

Pocock, British History: A Plea for a New Subject, 617-20; and J. G. A. Pocock, ThreeBritish

Revolultions:

641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton, N.J., 1980); J. C. D. Clark, The Strange Death of British

History? Reflections on Anglo-American Scholarship, HistoricalJoulrn-al0, no. 3 (1997): 789, 809.

57

Louis Cullen has used French regional archives extensively

in his work on eighteenth-century

trade. See especially L. M. Cullen, GalwayMerchants in the Outside World, 1650-1800,

in

Diarmuid

O'Cearbhaill, ed., Galway

Town and

Gown,

1484-1984

(Dublin, 1984),

63-89.

58

Jerrold I.

Casway,

Owen Roe O'Neill and the

Strulggleor

Catholic ITeland(Philadelphia, 1984);

Marianne Elliott, Partners n

Revolultion:

The United Irishmen and France

(New Haven, Conn., 1989);

Grainne Henry,

The Irish

Military Commutnityn Spanish Flanders,

1586-1621 (Dublin, 1992);

and

Ulster

Exiles in

Europe, 1605-1641,

in

Mac

Cuarta,

Ulster

1641,

37-60; B. Jennings,

Wild Geese in

Spanish Flanders, 1582-1700 (Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 1964);

and

Irish Swordsmen

in

Flanders, 1586-1610, Stuldies36 (1947); 37 (1948); Hiram Morgan, Tyrone'sRebellion: The Ouitbreak

of the Nine Years' War n Tuldor reland (London, 1993); Jane Ohlmeyer,

A

Failed Revolution? The

Irish Confederate War

in

Its European Context, HistoryIreland 3, no.

1 (1995): 24-28; and Ireland

Independent: Confederate Foreign Policy and International

Relations

during

the Mid-Seventeenth

Century, in Ohlmeyer, Ireland, 89-111; C. Petrie, Ireland in Spanish and French Strategy 1558-

1815, Irish Sword 6 (Summer 1964); J. J. Silke, ITelandand Eulrope Dundalk,

1966); and The Irish

Abroad, 1534-1691, in Moody, New History of Ireland, vol. 3; J.

G. Simms, The Irish on the

Continent, 1691-1800,

in

Moody and Vaughan, New History, vol. 4;

Micheline

Kerney Walsh,

Destruiction y Peace : Hulgh

0

Neill after Kinsale (Monaghan, 1986);

and Helga Robinson-Hammer-

stein, ed., EutropeanUniversities n the Age of Reformationand Coulnter-ReformationDublin, 1998).

59

The

Irish

diaspora-whether it was

of clerics or

civilians,

merchants or mercenaries-has

attracted

scholarly interest. See,

for

example,

L.

M. Cullen, The

Irish Diaspora of the Seventeenth and

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458 Jane

Ohlmeyer

25,000 Irish mercenaries served

in

the

armies of France and Spain;60during

the

mid-seventeenth century,

an

additional 29,000 mercenaries, together with

their

families,

left to

fight

in

the

continental

armies;61 and after

1690,

an additional

18,000 left for France.

Louis

Cullen has recently suggested that an average of

500

men per annum migratedto the continent, and if women and children are included

the figure probably

stands

at

700.62

In

contrast,

Irish

migration

to the New World

probably averaged 200 migrants per annum during

the first half

of the seventeenth

century

and 400

per

annum

during

the second.63It was

only

in

the

middle

and later

decades of the

eighteenth century

that the

Irish, especially those

from

Ulster,

crossed

the Atlantic

in

substantial

numbers.

Though numerically insignificant,

these Irish

adventurers, hailing

from

a

wide

variety

of ethnic and

religious

backgrounds,

settled

in

the

Amazon

Basin,

New-

foundland, Virginia,

and the

West

Indies.64

Moreover,

Ireland's

commercial relation-

ship with the Atlantic world, albeit intimately linked to England's mercantilist

demands,

was defined

during

the

later seventeenth

century.Amazonia

in

particular

offered to Irish traders realistic and lucrative returns

in

tobacco, dyes and timber

and the

possibility

of

sugar

cultivation. 65 his was also true

of

the West

Indies,

where,

prior to 1690, Ireland dominated the provisioning

trade. 66As

Donald Akenson's

fascinating

case

study

of

the

tiny

island of

Montserrat

during

the

early

modern

Eighteenth Centuries,

n Nicholas

Canny, ed., Eulropeanis

n the Move:

Stuldies

n

EulropeanMigration,

1500-1800 (Oxford, 1994);

and

Jerrold Casway,

Irish Women

Overseas, 1500-1800,

in

Margaret

MacCurtain and Mary O'Dowd, eds., Women n Early Modem-lreland(Dublin, 1991), 112-32.

60

Henry, Irish Militaty Community. Also see Robert Stradling's account of the Ulster army

in

Cantabria:

The

Spanish Monarchy

and Irish Mercenaries:

The Wild Geese

in

Spain,

1618-68

(Dublin,

1994), chaps. 7-8. Apart

from an

interesting article by

Pierre

Gouhier, Mercenaires Irlandais au

service

de la France

(1635-1664), Irish

Sword 7

(1965): 58-75,

the

Irish

serving

in

the

French armies

prior to 1690 have been neglected. A wealth of material exists for the later period: Richard Hayes,

Ireland and Irishmen

in the French

Revolutioni Dublin, 1932); Hayes, Old Irish Links with France

(Dublin, 1940); and Hayes, BiographicalDictionaiy of Irishmen n France (Dublin, 1949). Also see the

classic

work

by

J. C.

O'Callaghan,

History

of Irish Brigades n

the Setvice

of Francefrom the Revolultion

... (1688) to the Revolultionn France (1789) (Glasgow, 1870). Irish mercenaries serving in the imperial,

Swedish,

Polish, Russian,

and

Scandinavian armies

during

the

seventeenth

century

also merit further

research. See, for instance, J. Hennig, Irish Soldiers

in

the 30

Years

War, Joulrnal f the Royal Society

of Antiqularies f

Ireland82

(1952):

28-36. For some recent

innovative research

on Scottish

mercenaries,

see Steve Murdoch, The House of Stuart and the Scottish ProfessionalSoldier 1618-1640: A Conflict

of National Identities,

in

Bertrand Taithe and

Tim

Thornton, eds., War. Identities in

Conflict,

1300-2000 (Stroud, Gloucestershire, 1998), 37-56.

61

Sir William

Petty,

who

spent

most of his adult life

in

Ireland,

estimated in

his Political Anatomy

of

Ireland (London, 1691) that There were transported of them [native Irish] into Spain, Flanders, [and]

France, 34,000 soldiers; and of boys, women, priests ... no less than 6000 (pp. 7, 19). In the absence

of

quantitative data,

this

figure

must be

regarded

as a

guesstimate,

but it

would seem a

reasonably

accurate one.

Recently,

Robert

Stradling suggested

that between 1651 and

1654-55

over

18,000

soldiers

(approximately3,600 per annum)

left

Ireland to serve

in

Spain.

Others would have traveled to

Flanders and, despite

a

parliamentaryban on French recruiting,

to France as

well.

In

addition, between

1644 and 1649,

a

further 11,000 soldiers were dispatched to the continental theater of war (7,000 for

the French

armies and

approximately4,000

for the

Spanish forces). Stradling, Spanish Monarchy,

164.

62

Cullen, Irish Diaspora, 124, 139.

63

Cullen,

Irish

Diaspora, 126-27,

139.

64

Donald Harman Akenson, If the Irish Ran the World:Montserrat,1630-1730 (Liverpool, 1997),

provides

an excellent overview of

these early

settlements. Also see

essays by Canny (chaps.

1

and 7)

and

Hilary

Beckles

in

Canny, OxfordHistoty of

the

British

Empire,

vol. 1.

65

Joyce Lorimer, ed., En1glish

nd

Irish Settlement

0)

the River

Amazon, 1550-1646 (London, 1989),

123.

66

Thomas M.

Truxes,

Ihish-Americanz

rade, 1660-1783 (Cambridge, 1988), 14.

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Seventeenth-Centtty Ireland and the New British and Atlantic Histories 459

period shows,

the Irish- schooled in

early English imperialism (sometimes quite

unpleasantly) -became aggressive and expert imperialists

themselves.67 By the

mid-seventeenth century, the population of Montserrat consisted of roughly 1,000

families,

the

majority

of whom

were

of Irish

provenance and largely Catholics of

both Old English and native Irish extraction. During the early decades of the

seventeenth century, many traveled to the West Indies voluntarily as indentured

servants destined to cultivate tobacco. (Only after 1680 did Montserrat become a

sugar island.) Numbers increased significantlywith the Cromwellian

transportations

of the

1650s (as many

as

10,000 Catholics were shipped to

the West

Indies),

and

by

the late

seventeenth century nearly 70 percent

of

Montserrat'swhite

population

was

Irish. According to Akenson, Montserrat registered the highest concentration of

persons

of Irish

ethnicity

of

any colony

in the

history

of

both the

first and

second

English empires. 68Moreover, he demonstrates that these

Irish

settlers

not

only

prospered but became more economically powerful than their British counter-

parts largely

because

they

well knew how to be hard and

efficient

slave masters. 69

England's

colonial

relationship

with

Ireland not only shaped the

mindset

of Irish

imperialists

in

the West Indies,

it

also helped to define English attitudes toward

their American colonies. Ireland

was,

after

all,

Britain's first

colony and,

as

Jack

Greene

recently noted,

a

colony

on

the near

periphery

of the transoceanic British

Empire, as America was one on

the

outer periphery. 70Howard Mumford Jones,

D. B.

Quinn,

and Nicholas

Canny

have shown how

English expansionists-

including

Sir

Walter Raleigh, Humphrey Gilbert,

and William

Penn-whose

colonial exploits traversed the Atlantic, used their Irish experiences to confirmtheir

assumptions

of

savagism, paganism,

and barbarism and

applied

these

to the

indigenous population

of the

New World. '71

n

an Irish

context,

the

language

of

67

Akens,pn,If the Irish Ran the World,7, 174.

68

Akenson, If the Irish Ran the World, 107.

69

Akenson, If the IhishRan

the World, 117.

70

A suggestion made by

Jack P. Greene at the American Historical Association, January

3, 1997, in

response to the paper I contributed to a panel on the New

British History in Its Atlantic Context.

Some inroads have already

been made to construct a historiographyaround an Atlantic

world. See, for

example, Jack P. Greene and

J. R. Pole, eds., Colonial BritishAmerica:Essays in the New

Histo;y of the

Early ModernEra (Baltimore, Md., 1984), esp. chap. 1; Bailyn and Morgan, Strangerswithinthe Realm,

esp. the chapters by Nicholas

Canny and Eric Richards; Karen Kupperman, ed., America

in

Eluropean

Consciouisness,1493-1750

(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995), esp. the chapters by David Armitage

and

Kupperman;Canny,Eluropeans

n the Move. For an Irish perspective,

see the essays by Canny,Brendan

Bradshaw,

and Karl

Bottigheimer

in

K.

R.

Andrews,

N. Canny, and E. H. Hair, eds., The Westward

Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic and

America, 1480-1650 (Liverpool,

1978);

Raymond Gillespie, Explorers,Exploiters and Entrepreneurs:

Early Modern Ireland and Its Context,

1500-1700, in B. J. Graham

and L. J. P

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