The Old English (Norman)/Old Irish (Gaelic) Counter-Reformation in Ireland

The general point of demarcation between the Old English and Old Irish emerges obviously from the Cambro-Norman settlement of the mid 12th century & continued more or less unabated up until the Henrician programme of 'surrender & regrant' (1534) which had the effect of diluting in many cases the rigid polarity that existed between both groups. The Old English as a descriptive category is used by historians mainly from the 12th c (more rarely) up to the time of the Williamite Wars after which the distinction becomes less relevant owing to the fact that the Old English had by and large retained their catholicism throughout the Reformation and thus were lumped together (in English eyes at least) as belonging to the main body of Irish. Much to their own chagrin it may be said - see here the constitutional argument's of the barrister Darcy (of Galway OE stock) which reiterated his 'class's loyalty to the Crown in the face of Wentworth's (ie Strafford's) 'thorough' policy while distancing himself in turn from the more separatist and Gaelic inspired Geoffrey Keating (Séamus Ó Ceitinn) - who, like so many at the time, were very conscious that they came from 'mixed stock'.

The two identities (Old English & Old Irish) were thus conflated for all practical purposes during the Cromwellian confiscations and the Williamite settlement - with the more singular identity of Irish catholic beginning to supersede them. On the other hand you also had emerging the Anglican Protestant Ascendency, many of whom certainly began to view themselves in time as unproblematically Irish and the Ulster-Scots 'dissenters' who for long had to settle for second class citizenship within the hegemonic Anglican sphere. It's an important distinction obviously during the turbulent (religious & political) wars of the 17th c as the many alliances which were formed especially during the period of the Kilkenny Catholic Confederacy often unravelled on account of both traditions differing conception of what ends should be pursued. Generally speaking, the Old Irish (epitomised by Owen Ruadh O' Neill) fought for land confiscated after the Nine Years War (1594-1603) while the Old English fought to retain land which the 1641 rising had threatened.

There is plenty of evidence for intermarriage among the higher strata of Gaelic and Anglo-Norman families from the earliest times (c.1150 on) and increasingly I think after the consolidation of Gaelic lordships that came after the Black Death and up to the War of the Roses - the Anglo-Norman world being in retreat during this time. These were classic strategic alliances to shore up support or buttress territory and it's within the aristocratic realm that cultural diffusion became prominent. Likewise, the absence of these incentives (of consolidating land or influence) among the Gaelic population who were not high up in the pecking order of the derbfine meant a continuing isolation from Anglo-Norman influence.

A greater proportion of the Old English would have been city and town dwellers - inhabiting the likes of Limerick, Cork, Kilkenny, Dublin and coastal towns in Galway; all along the traditional confines of the Pale. Fermanagh, for instance, would have been Old Irish and well outside the Queen's writ right up until the Nine Years War where the Maguires were eventually subsumed, along with the rest of the Gaelic chieftains, into the new jurisdictions and baronies established by James I. The new tensions introduced under Henry's surrender and regrant (1534) may have made life uncomfortable at times but the biggest changes only began to occur after the Desmond Rebellion (c.1580) in Munster. From this point on Elizabeth's deputies took a much more aggressive approach demanding ever more exactions and professions of loyalty from the Gaelic lordships.

Maguire's territory stood as a buffer for a long time between the encroaching English forces which were ever moving slowly northward towards the O' Neill stronghold in mid-Ulster. Basically, the writing was on the wall for the Gaelic way of life everywhere unless some unprecedented alliance were to occur - which did happen in a sense when O'Donnell joined arms with Tyrone - they hung out as long as they could twisting and turning in the breeze offering Elizabeth all kinds of protestations of loyalty while they awaited Spanish help. When it arrived it was too little and too late. The war ended in 1603 and after a pardon and much chicanery O' Neill had his lands restored but on the foot of legal machinations by Sir John Davies (now de facto governor of Ulster) himself and the last of the Gaelic chieftains saw no prospect of their being able to retain their lands and title. So off they went as guests to the crestfallen Spanish monarchy.

The great carve up of Fermanagh and the rest of the Ulster territories now began in earnest (c.1607). Under the brehon system land was held and used communally and mixed arable farming was practised along with wide ranging use of pasture. Great herds of cattle known as creaghts would be circuitously driven around the territory of the respective Gaelic lordship; corn, oats, bacon and dairy being your staples. The potato wasn't introduced until after the Confederate Wars (Raleigh had only brought it back from the New World in 16-0- splash) but when it was eventually sown extensively my guess is that it went a long way to stave off social unrest. It yields more calories per acre than any other root vegetable and a tiny plot can keep a family fed on little else. This helped deal with the land use crisis which emerged in areas under plantation; the discontent with which actually provided the trigger for the Ulster uprising in 1641. The question of changing faiths only really entered the equation for those who held significant tracts of land as Penal laws placed restrictions on inheritance, buying more land, making improvements etc.

Even so, comparatively few, even among the largest landowners changed their faith. The numbers are quite accurate for this and I think it amounts to about a 5% conversion rate over the course of the 18th century which is quite small when you consider the amount of land that changed from Old Irish/Old English into new Protestant settler hands. Catholics held something like 85% of the land before the Confederate Wars but barely 10% after the Williamite Settlement. It was simply unheard of for small tenant holdholders (as they had now become - bound to their little plots) to change their faith irrespective of what persuasion their overlord was. The Ulster uprising itself and the subsequent 'massacre' of Protestant and Presbyterian English and Scots settlers, (though the numbers were wildly exaggerated at the time for political purposes), nevertheless attests to the widespread discontent that must have been present under the new arrangements.

Given the trajectory taken by later Irish history, not merely the Repeal and Home Rule Campaigns but the Gaelic Cultural Revival which preceded the War of Independence, it is the common and customary usage in this land to refer to the events of 1641 as an 'uprising' with all the connotations implicit in the term. To use the word 'rebellion' would be to grant retrospective legitimacy to the Jacobean power structures then foisting themselves upon Ulster. Of course, there is an irony in this popular interpretation of events in that the bonafides of the Stuart kingship itself were seldom questioned (at least officially) by the leaders of the uprising/rebellion. Then again, "Séamus an Chaca", ('James the sh*t') was the ignominious epithet later applied by the disgruntled Catholic peasantry on James II after he had left them at the mercy of William of Orange.

The coded use of language, even the contemporary suggestion of what words may be appropriate at what times to describe which events all point to a most interesting contestation of legitimacy. With the Union of the Three Kingdoms Gaelic bards were busily drawing up fantabulous lineages for the (ultimately Norman) 'Stewards' which had them descended from ancient (6th & 7th c) Irish high kings amidst constant speculation that the continental O'Neill's were preparing once again to lay claim to their own ancient titles in Tír Éoghain. There appears no doubt that it was papal and continental influence in the form of Catholic France and Spain which were still harbouring many Gaelic Irish refugees from the Nine Years War which influenced this type of propagandising amongst the scribes. But even if events in Europe and the wider religious conflict of the age prompted a re-examination amongst the exiled Gaelic chieftains and intelligentsia at a popular level there would still exist a fundamental absence of legitimacy particularly among those who were not 'deserving Irish', according to Davies schema, or who belonged to the extended derbfhine of one of the dispossessed Ulster Gaelic lords such as O' Neill or O' Donnell. The (in)famous 1641 depositions are in fact highly charged political documents which had an evident value to contemporary Crown policymakers in generating further anti-Catholic hysteria and raising revenues for more land confiscations and as such should be approached with caution.

Inevitably, to understand the composite identity 'Irish Catholic' which emerged after the Williamite Settlement we will have to consider the great question as to why the Old English failed to get swept up in the Henrician schism as of all the proposals put forward by the Confederate negotiators with Ormond the one issue which all along apeared to be utterly non-negotiable was their adherence to the Catholic faith. This was the crux of the reason why successive agreements broke down with Ormond, even though Charles at times, particularly after the Battle of Naseby in 1646 was willing to offer greater concessions to catholics, anything in fact, that would free up Confederate forces to fight for Royalists armies in England. So why did the Old English retain their catholicism in the face of intense reforming pressures from successive Tudor overlords? I think part of the reason at least resides in the manner by which both Gaelic and Anglo-Irish communities had been co-existing within a single ecclesiastical organisation for hundreds of years.

According to the French mediaeval chronicler Froissart (who spent time in the court of Edward III and Richard II) a meeting was once convened in 1395 by Henry Chrysted with leaders of some of the chief Gaelic dynasties; O' Neill (Ulster), O Conchobhair (Connaught), O' Brian (Munster) and Mac Murchada (Leinster) with the intention of getting them to learn and perhaps adopt some of the manners and mores of English courtly life. At this meeting, Chrysted, deputising for the English king, 'impertinently' dropped a diplomatic clanger by questioning their religious faith to which they replied 'warmly' and in unison that their belief 'in God and the Trinity' was as strong as any Englishman's. It's an episode, whether apocryphal or not, that highlights the divisions that nevertheless then existed between what historians call ecclessia inter Hibernicos and ecclessia inter Anglicos.

The Statutes of Kilkenny (1367) had notoriously banned Gaelic (Old) Irish from holding ecclesiastical office in areas under English administration but in many instances the law had to be overlooked owing to the power of the Gaelic chieftains in dioceses that were only nominally under English control. Throughout the 14th century the Irish church had a fully integrated episcopacy in both Gaelic and English dominated areas organised in the conventional Latin way with chapters, deaneries and parishes. If we take a look at the appointment of bishops during this century we see that just over half of the bishoprics were ruled by Gaelic Irishman. According to J. A. Watt in "Gaelic Polity and Cultural Identity"

- "the province of Tuam (Connaght) with eight dioceses was ruled almost entirely by Gaelic Irish bishops, while of the twelve dioceses of Armagh (Ulster) only a half had any prelates of the other nation. Two of the nine Cashel (Munster) dioceses invariably had Gaelic Irish bishops in the fourteenth century, and in two others the bishop was sometimes Gaelic Irish and sometimes not. No Gaelic Irishman was bishop in the five dioceses of the Dublin (Leinster) province in this period. Thus, of thirty-three dioceses, over half were ruled by Gaelic Irishmen".

Acknowledging the cleavage that existed culturally and poltically between the Gaelic lordships and the areas dominated by the Pale we nevertheless have to subscribe to the view that before the Reformation this common subservience to Rome; inhabiting the same church institutions and canonical laws in practice worked as a type of social cement. At the apex of church organisation some level of co-operation had to exist at the various synods and so on between the Gaelic Irish papal appointees and their English counterparts. Just as the English bishops in Ireland were selected through consultation with the English king so too the Gaelic bishops were appointed in deference to the wishes of the local Gaelic magnates. What distinguished church organisation in the Gaelic regions (inter Hibernicos) was the widespread acceptance of hereditary succession and the existence of ecclesiastical families. Thus Eoin O' Grada who became Archbishop of Tuam was the son of Eoin O Grada, Archbishop of Cashel as well as being the father of Sean O' Grada, bishop of Elphin. But the O' Grady's, as well being fully integrated within the Gaelic world often sent their sons to be educated on the continent or in England; Nicol O' Grada (Archdeacon of Killaloe) and Eoin O Grada (Tuam) were both graduates in canon law from Oxford.

If politically and culturally, the Gaelic and English worlds were irreconcilable, in the religious sphere at least there seems plenty of evidence of greater co-operation. One example of this is the case of John Colton, the English Archbishop of Armagh, who in 1397 had to visit the see of Derry which was deep in the heart of O' Donnell territory to vindicate the theoretical rights which he had over appointing a successor. Accompanied by Gaelic and Anglo-Irish priests (all details of the journey were recorded by a Meath priest Richard Kenmare) he spent five nights with Augustinians where the expenses were shared evenly and five nights hosted by Gaelic erenaghs - the farmers of episcopal mensal lands - who, consistent with their duties, made no distinction of the Archbishop's 'nationality' and provided for the whole retinue in a manner similar to the Gaelic custom of cuid oidhce or 'cuddy'. Again, throughout the journey of these wholly Gaelic dioceses his authority didn't appear to be questioned; he heard matrimonial cases, made an appointment to a rectory, setttled a dispute concerning episcopal property and finally on the Sunday of his visit to Derry was asked to celebrate mass 'for the thousands of people assembled out of respect for him'.

However, this friction free type of relationship between Anglo-Irish appointees to bishoprics within predominantly Gaelic dioceses may have been the exception rather than the rule. When Colton first assumed the post he was initially greeted with sustained opposition by the Derry chapter until his church subordinate (and O' Donnell clansman) Conchobhar Mac Carmaic Ui Domhnaill, bishop of Raphoe, interceded on his behalf to gain the respect of his Gaelic parishoners. Also, in line with this idea that a common faith necessarily healed tensions between the two groups a provincial decree issued by Milo Sweetman, (made Archbishop of Armagh in 1361) urged his fellow ecclesiastics 'to labour to their utmost to bring about and preserve peace between the English and the Irish of our province of Armagh, preaching peace between them ...'.

So, in many ways, the pre-Reformation church in Ireland whose dioceses often encroached and spilled over into both domains was a potentially and oftentimes potent bridge between peoples of the Gaelic lordships and the English administered areas. It may be suggested that the ties which bound them together ecclesiastically where sufficiently strong to survive the convulsions of the Elizabethan plantations and in fact given the increasingly widespread occurence of intermarriage among Gaelic nobles and Old English this religious affinity emerged as a type of indispensable negotiating platform - a commonality both were loathe to jettison amidst the forcible imposition of English laws and administration and the final negation of the Gaelic polity.

Kenneth Nicholls takes the same line with respect to a decline in the pre-Reformation Irish Church (both in its Gaelic and old English dimensions and similarly points to the mendicants as though they were the only functional religious body) but I’m wondering whether this is too harsh a judgement. After all, when we consider the reputed strength of popular opposition to Henry’s reforms - where ‘heretical’ bishops and clerics appointed by the Crown are often being run out of the towns and parishes and the fact that the only support the new Protestant Archbishop Brown can get is from a handful of privy councillors - it all indicates a native resistance perhaps tutored in advance by an effectively active clerical order. But, as he says himself, apart from some work on the organisation of the Church there’s been very little scholarship done on the actual religious life of the people in the later mediaeval period (up to the schism) so it’s difficult to gauge how widespread the discontent was on a popular level as we simply don’t know how deeply implanted were the Roman doctrines.

The multitude of shrines and sites of pilgrimage he dismisses as a type of ‘secular cult’ and a form of worship not integrated in any intelligible way with the teachings of the Roman Church but this is reductive and misleading; imputing in fact a ‘shallowness’ of faith ready to be swept aside by the more rigorous anti-idolatry of the Anglican species of Calvinism. Even an historian of Roy Foster’s calibre allows his protestant heritage to betray himself by regarding Marian devotion as a type of superstition - on a certain level it’s difficult to dispute - but when your attempting an impartial history of a country torn in half by the Counter-Reformation it’s not a terribly helpful characterisation.

In an article co-written with D. B. Quinn (“Ireland 1534”), Nicholls regards the role of hereditary appointment to benefices in the Church inter hibernicos as ‘perhaps a significant factor’ in the failure of the Reformation to take hold in Ireland. The argument is that a cosy system had developed in the Gaelic and Gaelicised regions whereby benefice holders in the higher ecclesiastical offices had need of a papal dispensation to secure office on account of the Church’s position on celibacy. This had led, he argues, to a 'culture of contact' which viewed the Church not as a rapacious collector of tithes or as a vaguely tyrannous and imposing force, as was the case in England, but instead as a benevolent power bestowing much sought for favours - an arrangement which, he also argues, contributed to the ‘laicisation’ of the clergy (a euphemism for corruption and incompetence in this instance).

The trouble with this line of debate is that many (if not most) of the high ecclesiastical offices within the Gaelic lordships weren’t actually held on an hereditary basis and the appointments were quite often of a very high calibre contrary to the impression he conveys. After the Archbishopric of Armagh was roped into the English fold in the 14th century (see John Colton above) the most important ecclesiastical office (viewed from an Old Irish perspective) became that of the Archbishopric of Tuam which had consistently noteworthy Gaelic scholars as incumbents right up until the Act of Supremacy. Muiris O’ Fithcheallaigh for instance was Professor of Philosophy at Padua and had written celebrated commentaries on the works of Duns Scotus before his papal appointment to the seat of Tuam in 1506. Hardly evidence of a Church in decline or one not accustomed to taking itself seriously.

Having said all that, despite their native Gaelic background and their obvious allegiances with the kinship structure into which their born it would be a mistake to view ecclesiastics of O’ Fithcheallaigh’s stamp, once in office, as simply becoming the mouthpiece of whatever Gaelic lordship happened to be dominant given the long standing tensions that existed between canon law and brehon law - not to mention the vaguely concealed contempt found in the various Annals for the seemingly senseless endemic warfare of rival chieftains.

As an example of the strength of the Counter-Refomation in an Old English redoubt a amusing account of the succession of Queen Mary in 1553 by the exasperated (Anglican) Bishop Bale who found that ‘within little more than a month' of her proclamation in London, the citizens of Kilkenny had resumed;

" .. the whole papism without either statute or yet proclamation .... they rung all the bells … they flung up their caps to the battlements of the great temple (St. Canice’s Cathedral), with smilings and laughings most dissolutely … they brought forth their copes, candlesticks, holy water stock, cross and censers, they mustered forth in general procession most gorgeously, all the town over, with Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis and the rest of the Latin litany .. "

One thing is clear about the continental exodus and the burst of seminary activity that followed the Nine Years War is that the ‘formulated strategy’ entailed a self-consciously propagandistic reworking of Gaelic resistance to the Tudor wars of conquest as a spirited defence of Roman Catholicism. This was done not merely to appease the prejudices of their French and Spanish hosts but was in fact the only intelligible strategy left available to them - what better way to recover lands and titles if not by harnessing the resources of the post-Tridentine Habsburg Counter-Reformation. In the imaginations of the exiled Irish Franciscan and Jesuit scribes now ensconced in Louvain the complex thread of alliances (both Old Irish and Old English) which lay behind the Geraldine revolt are eschewed in favour of a focus on Silken Thomas last minute appeal to the papacy; whatever else lay behind the Earl’s grievances, which were a long time brewing and predated the reform; religion can scarcely be said to be one of them.

In the long saga of the Desmond rebellion Gerald Fitzgerald can hardly be said to have given a farthing for anything other than the retention of his lands and the rights to maintain his lordship in the customary Gaelic manner; the opposition here centred solely around the impositions of the new Elizabethan office of Lord President of Munster which attempted to convert The Fitzgerald’s ‘cuddy’ into taxable Crown income which combined with the perennial baiting of his long time rival ‘Black Tom’ Butler threw him into frenzies of revolt. It’s true his kinsman James Fitzmaurice (perhaps ahead of his time) rallied bravely under a crusading banner but once his Spanish intrigues failed to net any tangible support his followers soon flocked back to the distinctly irreligious Fitzgerald - threatening to hang his Spanish priest as they done so. And what of Tadgh O Cianain’s depiction of Hugh O’ Neill as the devoted pilgrim? As Seán Ó Faoláin has put it;

"It is one of the most dismaying falsifications of history that this man, who as a European figure in his intelligent awareness of the large nature of the conflict in which he took part - has been lost to European history, and made part of a merely local piety. Any nation that tries to shelter its history and its heroes from comparisons is merely trying to shelter them in a vacuum, the result of which can only be that blank and vacant Requiescat which, as far as the life of this world is concerned, has for centuries obliterated O’ Neill. Those who, after the fashion of Archbishop Lombard, made a pious patriot of him have denied him the intellectual judgement to which his stature entitled him… he understood that he and they were not merely local pashas fighting for local power but part of a world conflict .. "

Was this true? Was the Tudor conquest and the Confederate Wars part of a "world conflict"? Was it perceived as such by the generality of Irish struggling in the wake of successive plantations? In many respects obviously this case can be argued and no doubt some of the participants were mutually emboldened by religious ties of affinity along with long held clan-based ones which through years of intermarriage soldered together the ancient and familiar Old Irish/Old English dichotomies but recent research has shown that among the aristocratic elements at least other factors were certainly just as influential.

In Micheal O'Siorchu's "Confederate Ireland (1642-49)" which is the most detailed examination yet of the Confederate council and administration the author has abandoned the traditional dichotomy of Old English and Old Irish in favour of a tripartite scheme which sees the Kilkenny factions split off into a 'peace party' 'moderates' and a more radical 'clerical party'. His main justification for this is that both the Old English and Old Irish who had political leverage within the Confederacy were generally derived from a conservative landowning class whose shared aim was to ensure that the rebellion didn't become so chaotic as to threaten their propertied status. The consensus viewpoint at least is that the Old Irish who were attempting to have lands and titles restored from the period of the Elizabethan and Ulster plantations were diplomatically isolated by the 'peace party' during the negotiations with Ormond thus leading to the eventual breakdown of that alliance and the greater susceptibility & weakness of the Confederacy to halt the progress of Cromwell and the Parliamentary Army.

Most, if not all of the general narratives highlight the division but then again none of the analysis hitherto has been specifically focused on the nuts and bolts of the Confederate Supreme Council and General Assembly. (He is partly indebted to Donal Cregan's famed but unpublished Ph.D thesis on the inner workings of the Confederate administration which Theo Moody held under lock and key for thirty odd years) Anyway, I don't think it was Cregan's work that prompted his re-evaluation but just a plain old hankering for a little more conceptual clarity.

What Ó Siochrú found as a researcher is that the traditional dichotomy has its limitations as an analytic tool for the obvious reasons that several of the "Old English" were in the Rinucinni camp (Oliver Plunkett, Lord Louth, Piers Butler etc.) many of the "Old Irish" nobles were in the 'Ormondist' peace camp and others again had backgrounds and lineages which defy any kind of crude categorisation. Richard Butler (Viscount Mountgarret) for instance was the son of Grany Fitzpatrick and her father was Brían Óg Mac Giolla Phádraig before he anglicised and accepted the earldom of Upper Ossory as part of Henry's surrender and regrant. Butler even fought in the Nine Years War on the side of Tyrone along with his father Edmund - they were both pardoned by Elizabeth in 1600 and managed to retain their lands but the Crown always viewed them with suspicion. He even married Hugh O' Neill's daughter (Margaret) in 1596 so his heirs would have had strong claim to the O' Neill title and estates should the Ulster plantation be somehow reversed - which of course it was, partially at least, in 1641. Wentworth in the 1630's intimidated him into ceding portions of his estates to New English protestant settlers and in fact his complaint against these actions wound up as part of (now) Strafford's impeachment by the Long Parliament.

Yet Butler is habitually glossed by Patrick Corish, Aidan Clarke and Roy Foster as the head of the "Old English" Ormondists as though there were nothing unproblematic about this designation. His political position appears to be quintessentially "Old English" with respect to his stance on the Inchiquin truce and Ormond negotiations yet he is clearly straddling 'both worlds' and occupying a type of mental space or cultural dualism which would be much more alien, for example, to the more Anglocentric world-view of some other of his fellow Confederates such as Fleming or Castlehaven.

Then there's Donough O' Callaghan, Daniel O' Brien and Donough MacCarthy (Viscount Muskerry) - all 'Old Irish' yet still included in the 'Old English' group - it's just all very messy conceptually - and Siochrú's intention appears to be just to clean things up a little bit but he's also hinting at other dynamics (such as the land issue) - which is being veiled by imputing possibly spurious divisions. The "Old Irish" generally fell behind the "clerical party" according to O' Siochrú's schema and behind the "nunciosts" according to Foster and Corish yet which "Old Irish" were these if not the Ulster Old Irish who pinned their hopes on O' Neill's demands to have the plantation reversed?

Rinucinni was hellbent on continuing the war at the most difficult of times and in the Ormond negotiations was the most intransigent of opponents offering very little wriggleroom for the Royalists. At times, Charles representatives simply had nothing to hang their hat on - depending on the period in question Rinucinni's demands ranged from full restoration of Catholic rights ie all "the Graces" - dropping of recusancy fines etc .. basically offering a position as co-equals with Anglicans (but nobody could countenance bringing such a proposition back to Charles camp). At one point he even wanted to resume the war in Scotland which was totally unfeasible logistically. But no matter who the papal delegate was they would still have to confront the bitter fallout that lay down the road between Owen O' Neill's Ulster army demands for full restoration of land title and the unwillingness of the more conservative "Old English" landowners (again, I use these descriptors with caution) to seek any alteration to the property status quo. Many of the Confederate Old English in the "peace party" were well established finacially and only sought to achieve minimal concessions on the religious issues.

Despite his early successes, the general level of support from the papacy and the Catholic powers is undermined in a large way by the failure of Rinucini to achieve a broad consensus among the Confederates. Leaving aside the military, political, “clique-based” or interpersonal reasons for that breakdown what I find interesting is Rinucini‘s comments on the faith of the Old English;

“these people are catholics only in name; the ideas they hold are almost the same as those of Henry VIII and Elizabeth”.

It appears that even at this relatively late stage in the Counter-Reformation, when the Roman church had fully mobilised it’s opposition to the schism, that the Old English were still not susceptible to the dictates of the papacy or to the counter-thrust outlined in the post-Tridentine reforms. What does that tell us about the nature of their relationship to the Crown? If, as we know, they failed to be swept up in the Henrician schism, why then didn’t they align themselves more firmly with the efforts of Rome to strengthen the institutions of Catholicism? Aidan Clarke, in his bibliographical supplement to A New History of Ireland III, 1534-1691 provides a short summary of some of the main arguments from academics who have attempted to answer this question and concluded by quoting Karl Bottigheimer who said “the puzzle of why the reformation failed remains an unanswered question”. I find the lack of academic consensus on this point intriguing.

Clearly, there were some Old English who made considerable efforts to advance the cause of Rome, indeed dedicated their lives to the task, as we see from the numbers emigrating to the continental seminaries. But there must be some other impulse which induced non-conformity amongst the Old English population which was frankly unrelated to the question of adhering to the old faith. We are familiar with the ‘colonial nationalism’ that emerged among the Protestant ascendancy in the middle of the 18th century and which reached its apogee during the American war of independence but would we be too wide of the mark to suggest a virulent form of Old English ‘colonial nationalism’, perhaps traceable in the ashes of the Geraldine revolt, which instead provided the spur to resist the Reformation? In fact, I think we can trace Darcy’s Argument and much of the opposition to Wentworth’s administration to this period of Geraldine dominance that followed the realignment of power in Ireland after the War of the Roses. There was, in this view, an Old English colonialist nationalism which sought greater autonomy from the Crown through a strengthened Dublin parliament which, obviously, wasn’t gerrymandered in favour of Protestant New English settlers. Is there a sense in which this parliamentary struggle predominated within the mindset of the Old English to the detriment of their alliances with the Old Irish who may have had different conceptions of kingship?

We can also add that the Old English after the Treaty of Limerick would have been far better poised to milk what advantage they could out of the new Penal Law political dispensation which arose. The laws were applied stiffly at first, selectively afterward (not wholly erased till the 1829 Emancipation and then with some qualification) and the OE would have been better placed to offer itself as a buffer class between the protestant ascendency and the numerous largely dispossessed Gaelic derbfines (extended families). Tough to find concrete sociological indicators on this one but my guess is that the successful merchant and trader class that did arise from the ranks of Irish catholics during the 18th century would have been drawn largely from former well-heeled families of the OE; though excluded from the legal profession, from civic or political office they nevertheless would have had greater 'cultural proximity' to the presiding English administration. This domain was in any case their bread & butter for centuries operating from harbour towns within the Pale in areas like Cork, Limerick, Dublin & Galway.

On the other hand, property was held communally within the Gaelic clan structure and each member of which (down to g.g g/son) would have had very definite ideas of land usage & entitlements accorded to them through the derbfine. So, the Old Irish in contrast were to a great extent still bound to one another socially in a way which the new laws couldn't or in fact never managed to quite penetrate. John Davies, for instance, who oversaw the Ulster plantation was astounded at how many generations back 'a common peasant' could recite his lineage in order to bolster his claims for usage of a particular plot of land. Many of these Gaelic clan derived networks of loyalty stubbornly persisted in the face of their evident social & political demotion and not a few pragmatically broke rank altogether. You can see this splintering process in action in satires like the 17th century Parliamint Chlainne Thómais where 'upwardly mobile' Gaelic speakers are lampooned by the bard for adopting English customs & laws and generally ingratiating themselves with the new colonial administration; teaching their children the tongue of the 'sassanach' and so on.

The whole notion of a 'Hidden Ireland' as advanced by Corkery is pretty easy to fathom under these circumstances; almost as though there were now two parallel worlds in Ireland. The official one which had it's seat of power in Dublin Castle, lorded over by a triumphant Anglican ascendency and to which the former OE reluctantly aligned itself & a subterranean Gaelic one which continued to maintain it's traditions stubbornly in the face of their political isolation. It was from the 'grassroots' of this latter grouping which evidently emerged the many 'secret societies' whose modus operandi eventually morphed into the oath-bound organisational structure of the Fenians after the famine.